PHP 11-20

             Foreword—I spent more than half of 2013 at Pendle Hill in Wallingford,    

 PA, and fell in love with many things about it. My latest passion is with their     

 pamphlets.  Here I have, after reading them, set down the most impressive     

 excerpts of each, with rare paraphrasing and additions of my own [in brackets].  

 Most of all I am impressed with the timelessness of these pamphlets, the    

 oldest of which go back more than 80 years.

 11. A Discipline for Non-violence (by Richard Bartlett Gregg; 1941) 

            About the Author—Richard B. Gregg was a lawyer for 3 years before 

working with trade unions. He did arbitration for the railroad workers’ union 

after WWI. Laid off in the 1920's, he learned of the work of Mohandas Gandhi,

journeyed through India 4 years, & studied nonviolence. He wrote The Econo-

mics of Khaddar, The Power of Nonviolence (1934), PHP #3. The Value of 

Voluntary Simplicity; (1936) & #5. Pacifist Program: In Time of War; Threa-

tened War; or Fascism; (1939). He described nonviolence as a way of chan- 

ging the world's character. In 1935-36, he served as Pendle Hill's acting direc-

tor. His work was used by civil rights & social activists

           [The Secret of the Military Method's Power]—The world still has  

immense respect for the military method's show of firmness & order. What 

is the secret of the military method’s power? Nowhere is discipline, indivi-

dual subordination to the general welfare so effectively achieved as in military

organization. The power lies in the quality of their habits and their modes of 

habit formation.  If morality is so important in settlement of great conflicts, 

can we achieve [with nonviolence] a discipline more moral & potent than 

war's morality?

           George Russell & Captain Liddell Hart respectively, doubt the the 

practicality and the nation's ability to maintain nonviolent discipline. [I main-

tain] that nonviolent as well as military training requires physical drills and 

discipline; such training can be obtained through manual work. The program

will have economic implications, but it is offered primarily as a physical dis-

cipline for nonviolence. The believer in nonviolence uses this discipline even 

though he acknowledges the quantity of production will be thereby curtailed.

           In military training at its best, drilling & other disciplinary activities   

create instant obedience, self-respect, self-confidence, self-control, self-sacri-

fice, loyalty, & unity. There is pride in their position as protectors. It is now 

realized that pacific resistance can't be successful or make effective moral 

appeals if it is only passive; there is need for deeds. It must be action which

works toward winning settlement & achieving enduring order, security, free-

dom and moral equality, to produce mutual respect, friendliness, and peace. 

Without exertion pacifism seems and feels too negative. Because of lack of 

action there are many distinguished former pacifists.

           Psychological Reasons for Physical Action—Most people learn by 

physical action; verbal explanation isn't enough. Habits grow from repetitious

actions. I propose the nonviolent resister do manual work that: produces some-

thing good for the community, & for the poor & unemployed; is possible for 

the poor & unemployed to do for self-help & self-respect. This work is useful

& brotherly; it furnishes discipline for non-violence.

           The hand distinguishes man from beast and& enables him to use tools.

All through human evolution, the hand & using tools have greatly stimulated

& influenced one's mind's development.  prolonged, habitual tool use subtly

but powerfully organizes thoughts, emotions, & sentiments, giving a sense 

of power in dealing with our environment. Frequent repetition, gives faith, 

self-confidence, imaginative power, dignity, & self-respect. In sanitoriums' 

occupational therapy, interest & self-respect are enhanced by using articles 

made by one's own hands.

           Initial Doubts—Why aren't farmers & city manual workers ready

to use nonviolent resistance? Most individuals are capable of it, as is seen 

in the mostly non-violent character of industrial strikes. When non-violent 

leadership is present, manual workers show wonderful self-restraint. Those 

workers aren't prepared to make prolonged mass nonviolent resistance. There

is lack of political skill and of unity with the middle-class. Most don't under-

stand or believe in nonviolence's power. It is helpful for individuals & when 

practiced on a large scale as part of a [solid] plan with understanding of non-

violent reform, then it becomes an effective group discipline.

           [Understanding is key]. One skilled at drawing could copy a diagram. 

Without understanding the theory behind the diagram, it would produce no 

effect on one's mind. If one copied & understood it, one might be excited over

its applications. Understanding that pencil work may alter one's whole life. 

Individualistic and unintegrated hand work can't act as discipline for steady 

nonviolence. Another reason why manual workers aren't disciplined for mass 

nonviolence is competition in industry, commerce, & agriculture. Competition

on a large scale, under modern conditions, amounts to economic warfare, 

which negates nonviolence. For successful struggle of nonviolent constructive

effort, drilling, discipline of hand work, organization & raw material is needed.

           The Effects of Manual Work and Military Training—Surprisingly, 

the same valuable benefits derived from military training are developed by ha-

bitual, understood hand work. In nonviolent action, the primary OBEDIENCE 

will be to one's conscience & ideals, aided by careful thinking & meditation. It 

helps to have an appreciation of how these principles operate on people's  

minds & hearts. 

       SELF-RESPECT comes from realizing that one is being industrious & 

manually competent. SELF-RELIANCE is more needed by the gentle [& some-

times out-of-work] resister than the soldier, for work often takes place away 

from any support. Devoting an hour or more a day to hand work may seem like

SELF-SACRIFICE. Sacrifice is not just giving up something. It is giving up a 

lesser good in order to secure a greater good. The steady, daily practice of 

hand work develops TENACITY, through having a clear pattern of feasible 

action, & ways of inducing action in a particular direction.

           The Effects of Manual Work and Military Training: Sense of Unity 

with Others—One who conscientiously and intelligently works with one's 

hands daily in a widespread organization will develop a sense of unity. That 

unity is peculiarly strong if the work is manual, because of the close connec-

tion between hand, mind, and self-awareness. [The connecting of the cerebrum

(thinking center) to the cerebellum (action center) by many nerve fibers] is evi-

dence of the close connection between mind and physical action. 

           The different kinds of brain imagery include: visual; auditory; muscular 

movement; sense of touch; & joint motion. The imagery of great numbers of 

inexpressive people & those of limited education are the last 3 kinds of brain 

imagery. Any great new step forward in the integration of human minds, such 

as group nonviolent resistance, will wisely be associated with manual work. 

This association will give such a movement a deep, firm, bodily basis.

           The hand worker will learn about the activities of other hand workers &  

will appreciate them as persons, members of a social group with common pur-

pose; the bond between farm workers and city hand workers would be streng-

thened. We must work with people & for them; giving money isn't enough. If 

diverse people take part in manual labor, it will be a democratic experience. It 

can unite all kinds of people, communities, & the nation.

           I am not suggesting the formation of separate, self-sufficing, small com-

munities for doing such work. Such a community would consist of over 100 

people and need enough expensive farmland to feed them all. It may be better 

to have believers in non-violence living in the general community, acting as 

ferments for these ideas. Manual work in small groups and individually will  

bring cohesion, significance & power to their efforts; part of the significance  

would be economic. The effect on society would be greater than that from 

separate communities.

           Sense of Order & Cooperation/ Protection of Community/ Energy—   

Under such conditions of group work, & with the growth in moral factors, there 

comes increase in happiness & satisfaction & solid group morale. As one sees 

one's articles used more widely, these realizations gain momentum, impressive-

ness, enthusiasm, & power. This will make it easier to endure hardship for their

cause. The experience of joint work, material and intangible products, & feeling 

useful creates a sense of order & cooperation. Creating awareness of order & 

personal usefulness by manual work in a large organization has vast importance

for the nation's freedom.

           The cumulative effect of little efforts & products would be the closing of 

chasms  between [all sorts of different social, economic, & educational groups]. 

Hand workers would see that they are creators of property & order, protectors  

& builders of their own state. [Some sure creators] of human energy are hope, 

faith, conviction, enthusiasm, good will. [Brought together in a large organiza-

tion], it will create widespread happiness & release immense energy. With an 

increase in numbers the momentum & power increases in almost geometrical 

ratio.

            Courage/ Equanimity & Moral Strength—How can quiet, humdrum   

activity develop courage? Courage has several strands: single-minded devo- 

tion; sense of unity; moral & physical energy; inner integration; power to en-

dure. Whatever gives a sense of control over exterior forces of any sort pro-

motes courage. Handwork is a manipulative skill which removes economic 

danger for individuals & the nation. Hand work and the use of its product pro-

motes simplicity; they reduce one's possessions & thus one's economic fears. 

           Making and using hand work increases personal consistency, so our 

inner conflicts are reduced, our poise is enhanced, & our courage is increased.

Allied with single-minded interest is love; all love gives courage. Love rises 

above the plane of friend/ enemy separation & conflict & asserts the unity of

the 2 parties. Where a nation has built up a vast store of goodwill, it can af-

ford to take social, economics and political risks that a nation poor in that 

respect can't take.

           The winning of equanimity & moral strength is a problem of an inner 

organizing of sentiments & thoughts, mobilizing energy, & attaining a unify-

ing ultimate spirit. Each person is a physical, emotional, intellectual, moral,

& spiritual energy center. Each of us grew up with frustrations & some humi-

liations, which blocked the energy of hope and desire when a plan failed. 

Continued blockage caused resentment and bitterness. Some of that blocked 

energy has been expressed; much of it still lies within us like a coiled-up 

watch-spring, even from our distant childhood, waiting for some trivial occa-

sion to trigger an explosion.

           War & riot provide a means of venting accumulated resentments. We 

generally have the self-control to handle new frustrations & humiliations. It 

is that huge reservoir of long-suppressed resentments which is so unmanage-

able & catches us off guard. The nature of manual work & its organization 

makes draining off that energy by means of manual activities peculiarly ef-

fective & complete. Anger among pacific resisters is the equivalent of cowar-

dice among soldiers. 

           Whatever reduces the tendency to anger promotes success in a non-

violent struggle. Some bitter former British soldiers secured little plots of  

land, raised crops, & kept animals. Physical work, creating something, &  

partly supporting themselves gradually eased their bitterness and anger,  

restored their self-respect, & gave them happiness. Wholehearted enlistment

in a hand work program would increase positive feelings and make maintain-

ing complete nonviolence easier.

           Practice in Handling Moral "Weapons/ Patience and Humility—

[In a non-violent approach to struggle], the nonviolent party must win the 

respect of its opponent by practicing unity, firmness of will, courage, compe-

tence, endurance, & strength. A hand work program powerfully demonstrates

at least some of these persuasions. Nonviolent resisters may do shovel-work, 

sanitary field work, & malaria prevention. The struggle to rid the world of 

organized violence will be the mightiest task humankind has undertaken. 

The discipline must be exceptionally thorough. They need an understanding

of & firm belief in the power of non-violence and faith in the ultimate possi-

bilities of human nature. A true craftsman's selfless fidelity to work is an 

important form of humility, & by infection promotes other forms of humility.

           Love of Truth/ Faith in Human Nature/ Satisfactions/ Relief from 

Moral Strain—Prolonged work with tools and physical material creates in 

the worker directness, respect for accuracy, candor, honesty, & sincerity, all 

elements in love of truth. In doing manual work with other people we learn 

their moral quality; we usually respect them more and have more faith in 

human nature. One is more normal and others around one are happier if one

has an outlet via manual work for one's desire & instinct for mastering some-

thing or someone. Such work could be seen as character-building, & should 

interest educators and community leaders.

           A new program, if it is to be widely adopted for any length of time, 

must provide immediate and real satisfactions & future satisfaction. 6 bodily

senses are given exercise & experience by manual work: sight, touch, hear-

ing, balance, muscular sensation, joint motion. Hand work provides more 

room for initiative, creation, co-operation, variety, freedom, sociability, self-

respect, and dignity than machine work.

           [The deeper the understanding] of  work's wider meaning, the more 

intellectual, emotional, & esthetic satisfactions arise. Habitual daily practice

of manual activities provide stimulus & response that promotes the whole 

person's growth. The nature of manual work is rhythmic, slow, patient, soo-

thing, routine, & undramatic, affording a contrast to the image of pacifism 

always staying on moral tiptoe. It's creative of useful & sometimes beautiful

things. After a strenuous moral effort, the gentle resister may retire to an artis-

tic & re-creative activity.

           The Best Manual Discipline & Reasons for its Superiority—The 

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Work Camps, international 

Quaker's & Pierre Cérésole's Service's International Relief & Reconstruction 

work in Europe are examples of work beneficial to the poor and unemployed 

of the community. The list of health services, building projects, agricultural 

tasks, and small-scale industries worked on is long.

           If one kind of work could be found that provides discipline and can be 

universally practiced, it would be especially valuable. It would need to pro-

vide one of the needs of food, shelter or clothing. Food can be raised only by

those with land. Building shelter requires many skills and much expensive 

material and is mostly heavy work. For clothing, once the raw fibers can be 

obtained, yarn & thread can be made by spinning, & many articles of clothing

by knitting, crocheting, weaving and sewing.  [Beginning with raw fibers and 

creating a supply of thread and yarn would avoid being cut off from factory-

made materials during a non-violent struggle].

           The product of hand-textile work is standard necessity. It is: transport-

able, saleable, universally useful, can be combined into a final unit product, &

be produced without a large organization. The hand tools of textile-making 

are inexpensive, small, and transportable. Anyone can do it, anywhere, any-

time, in groups of any size. It provides a change & a practical rest. For these

reasons the making of yarn & cloth by hand is the best manual work for crea-

ting a universal physical disciplinary activity for nonviolence.

           Overcoming a Prejudice/ Associated Training Activities/ Superio-

rity Over Military Discipline—Because the household manufacture of tex-

tile materials and clothing has for ages been mostly a women's occupation, 

many men will shy away from it, fearing to appear effeminate & undignified.

Courage isn't an exclusively male virtue or linked with superior size. The 

finished product by hand will usually be as cheap financially & perhaps chea-

per than mill-made product when the high cost of distribution is factored in.

           Pacific resisters should meet together not only for work, but also for 

study, discussion, singing, folk-dancing, reading nonviolence history, medita-

tion, and social service in order to develop moral & spiritual resources. To be 

effective we must have all levels of our being employed & working together;

there must be a discipline of body, emotion, mind and spirit. Discussion is 

important in understanding nonviolence and how manual work plays its part 

therein. This broad program of disciplinary activities would provide a rich 

sensory content as well as strong and varied intellectual, emotional, social, 

esthetic, moral and religious satisfactions. Such 4-fold disciplined wouldn't 

only make strong nonviolent resisters but also the basis for a better civiliza-

tion and a nonviolent world. 

           These activities engage a wider range of human faculties and potentia-

lities reach deeper & higher & are more consistent than are military exercises

and discipline. The military asks for too narrow a range of loyalty and unity. 

Its discipline severely limits men's initiative and freedom. It calls on one's 

courage & plays on one's fear of punishment. Believers in nonviolence must 

subject themselves to some sort of thorough discipline.

           In modern war, the expensive weapons, indiscriminate attacks, extent 

of destruction, distortion of truth, and resulting totalitarianism make a better 

peace impossible. Military discipline excludes the unity  with the opponent 

essential to an enduring peace. Because the nonviolent discipline wouldn't 

interfere with ordinary civilian life & would provide real satisfactions, such 

training could be embraced without harm or difficulty by an entire nation.

           [Conclusion]—If pacifism is ever to become a mass, national move-

ment, it must have a common discipline best found in the realm of manual 

work. Pierre Cérésole proposed every State should have a nonviolent stand-

ing army of good will to help with work in reconstruction, help with disease,

poverty, physical hardship, or lack of education inside the nation & beyond 

it. The national expenses for such an army & such work would be vastly less

than those for present armed forces; taxes would be far less. 

           National egoism would decrease, mutual trust and good will develop 

between both classes and nations; it would be a permanent conquest by kind-

ness. In Cérésole's Service International and Quakers' AFSC there has been 

for several years the nucleus of such an army of good will functioning. In all 

conflicts there are moral and physical factors. For nonviolent resistance the 

required physical element of discipline is manual labor and the direct social 

use of its products.

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12. A Standard of Living (by Mildred Binns Young; 1941)

             About the Author—Mildred Binns Young was born in Ohio & attended

Friends schools and Western Reserve University. She lived for some years at

Westtown School, where Wilmer Young was Dean of Boys. The Youngs then

lived in the South, working under American Friends Service Committee for

19 years; 4 pamphlets came out of the experience. From 1955-1960 they were

in residence at Pendle Hill.

            [Introduction]—2 years ago I defended a chosen poverty as a keen tool 

 for accomplishing work and a straight road to a clearer relationship with our 

 world, and as freedom (PHP 6. Functional Poverty). Now I must go further and     

 [discredit] our standard of living as contributing to the world's violence, and an-    

 nouncing the choice of poverty as a reasonable corollary to refusing to partici-

 pate in that violence. 

            Knowing the futility of getting & keeping, we still strive for it and are in 

 need of re-orientation. I feel hesitant in saying this, because it is skirting the sub-

 ject of economics of which I am ignorant, & calls into question a lifestyle I in-

 stinctively prize. The present moment painfully demonstrates that peace cannot 

 be organized over a substructure of strife. We can be glad that we made the 

 efforts at peace, even as we can be sure we did not strike deeply enough. 

            [Turning Back the Clock/ Lebenraum]—People say that "You can't turn 

 back the clock." I suppose what is really meant is you can't turn back the calen-

 dar. But the careful man is forever setting his watch by a trustworthy source; a 

 religious man must always be checking his life against the chrono- meter he 

 relies on. We act as if man were irreversible, while he furiously catapults him-

 self back into the depths of barbarity through his very devices of "progress." I

 propose not looking backward into an old world, but forward into a new world in

 which all the best that we have learned about the whole man will be met for

 everyone, and one's capacities called out in measures we can now only guess

 at. We have committed ourselves to progress without clarifying the aims. 

           It is not time, but direction we need to be concerned with. We are all at         

 cross purposes within, one side of life bumping into the other side of life, like 

 cars at an unregulated crossing. Kierkegaard calls it purity of heart, or to will 

 one thing only. Our American standard of living, [echoed] elsewhere, is the

 deepest cause of violence today. Our forefathers forgot about freedom to wor-    

 ship and set out toward comfort as humankind's chief end.  

            I conceive that Hitler means by Lebenraum not only more space, but     

 also scope for his people to live according to ideals, opportunities, & science   

 set by America & Germany's other recent conquerors. [In their claimed supe-

 riority was the claim] that they should possess more because they could use

 them better, much as white men claim in a country 10% Negro. Germany has        

 sacrificed the remainder of their generation to Lebenraum.

            [John Woolman and Poverty]—I remember the enrichments & amplifi-    

 cations of the hard colonial life, many of which Ben Franklin was instrumental in     

 bringing about. There also briefly lived a perhaps greater American, John Wool-

 man. Where Franklin thought in terms of nurturing the colonies, Woolman 

 thought of nurturing the straight, tender spirit of [each] man in whatever color

 skin, or quality dress or house. 

            He saw slavery ending in civil clash & a long-lasting aftermath. He saw 

 [the consequences of shipping luxuries and producing goods cheaply on men's, 

 women's, and child's labor]. He looked into the forest and saw how expanding    

 American culture crowded and ruined the Indian. He looked about him & saw

 how workmen, servants, and animals were used for ease and gain. He wrote:

 "May we look upon our Treasures, and furniture of our houses & the Garments

 in which we array ourselves and try whether the seeds of war have any nourish-   

 ment in our possessions or not. Holding Treasures in the Self pleasing Spirit is

 a Strong plant, the fruit whereof ripens fast." 

            His is a life we all feel back to as a touchstone, and I don't know the    

 Friend who doesn't honor him. I look at our houses, our schools, our tables, and     

 I wonder if it can be good for us to honor John Woolman in [only] our thoughts    

 and words. It might result in schizophrenia, a split personality. Florence Sanville

 puts a different interpretation on Ananias' death after keeping back a part of the

 money and lying about it to the Apostle Peter. Sin was not the cause of death,

 but a split personality. "He tried to subject himself to 2 opposing controls." 

            John Woolman saw where the expanding standard of material life was     

 tending, how a man's possession of goods ends in goods possessing the man.     

 He saw that large enterprises couldn't be formed without doing injury to men.      

 He is something of a authority to many of us. He seems to have known how to      

 express his sense of God in his every relationship to others. Poverty & physical

 work appeared as the very core of his testimony about the outward life. 

            His loving concern was verified by his own freedom from motives of self-   

 seeking, his sensitive rejection of any comfort or pleasure that couldn't be had    

 without burdening another. As long as we have made little of or set aside 

 Woolman’s testimony of poverty, we have squandered the heritage we have in

 his life-record. If he had known how science and mechanics would develop, he  

 would have felt even more the necessity of regulating his bodily life according     

 to its simplest needs, & the need to nurture that of God he saw in every man.   

            [Poverty vs. Simplicity]—Simplicity is a treacherous word; advertise-

 ments specialize in it too. Poverty is a clean, clear, word; I mean [voluntary]  

 poverty. It can still be voluntary even if it lands one in a spot there's no backing

 out of, or if one has never had anything else. I will try to distinguish between 

 this poverty & poverty with few blessings & no excuses. Jesus commanded

 poverty of disciples much like what John Woolman lived.

            Gandhi said: "Civilization ... consists not in the multiplication but in the    

 deliberate & voluntary reduction of wants." He also said that possessing with- 

 out needing a thing, is stealing a thing. Both Jesus & Gandhi gave these in-   

 structions to those who are in leadership training. The nonviolent pacifist is 

 offering one's self as pathfinder and exemplar in a totally unaccepted way of    

 life. One must substantiate in one's own life one's claim that only real values 

 are indispensable. While one clings to values that can demonstrably be       

 defended [only] by superior armament, one is caught in a contradiction.

           [Economy of Abundance]—For some decades now the American stan-    

 dard of living has been the pattern of standards everywhere. Even agriculture    

 [ignored critical scientific facts] in using the one crop system, ruining the land        

 & sinking farm people to a more helpless bondage than that of the wage-wor-   

 kers of industry. 

            We talked of "economy of abundance" & "distribution." Seldom have we   

 stopped to examine whether or not the standard itself is such a good one that it    

 is worth distributing. I am one who has never wearied of our modern scene, its       

 new cars and appliances, fashion, social life and city life. I once thought that all  

 would be well if we could only     spread these delights of modern life to all our    

 people; I no longer believe that. Have we yet to get a hold of a "standard of     

 living" that is appropriate & workable  to spread to everyone?

            Do recent mental health discoveries offset the strains of the mo-   

 dern life we promote enough to raise the level of national health? One    

 writer writes of "maximum satisfactions" & that "It is a crime against humanity    

 when anybody performs any essential work with less than maximum efficiency,    

 and the use of the best machines for that particular job." He has accepted "pro-   

 gress" too uncritically. There are other satisfactions in work besides that of fini-  

 shing as quickly as possible, other resources to be conserved besides time & 

 physical energy.

            [American Standard's International Application & Defense...]—Inter-   

 nationally, ambitious statesmen based their policies on making their countries   

 approach the American record of popular consumption. So Japan must reach  

 out into China; Britain must hold India and Egypt; Poland must hold to her sea-   

 port at all costs. Germany must take refuge in a regimented efficiency economy,

 lose all civil rights, and conquer her neighbors. Russia resorts to a proletarian 

 dictatorship to [match American production].

            America never relaxed her effort to extend herself & keep the lead. Ta-    

 riffs, US marines, Mexican oil, US gunboats on the Yangtze are reminders of   

 American interests' scope. We find everywhere reference to defense of Demo-   

 cracy, saving the American way of life, safeguarding our liberties.  What is it     

 really that Americans are all so avid to defend? [& there are forgotten Ame-  

 rican folk who don't participate in the American dream].

            Advertisements are a good index to our people's real temper. While    

 children and whole people are hungry in Europe and the Far East, we boast of 

 inexpensive "meat upon the table." And in a world where peace is now the ten-   

 derest and most wistfully far-off dream, is the temper of Americans indeed such  

 that it is good psychology to say "In a world of strife, there's peace in Beer?"

            Because modern life's machine is made out of vast numbers of needs,     

 hopes, beliefs, & fears, we can personify it & say it has no sense of direction.    

 To one who relies on spiritual & interior forces rather than on violence, belongs    

 the task of locating a new center, making re-alignment, facing a new direction,   

 setting one's watch by eternal sun without reference [to the local, cultural  

 time]. With one's watch well-set, one's life will fall into a new schedule; one   

 mustn't feel no dislocations; the benefits will more than compensate for the  

 strains.

            II: [Pacifist as Plant]—If our standard of living is a root cause of war, ac-   

 quiescence in it makes us partners in violence & war. As pacifists & leaders in   

 the use of an untried strength, we must re-orient in the specific direction of the 

 dayspring of peace. We can never relax efforts to influence the movements of   

 our time. Wars must cease; degrading, depleting poverty must be cured.

            We are to society as plants are to soil. There are replenishing & exhau-  

 sting plants; the more replenishers grow the better the soil becomes; exhau-    

 sting plants cause the reverse. The replenishing plant lespedeza cures the da-    

 mage done by [exhausting] cotton. Replenishers aren't parasitic, often make   

 excellent forage, & have pretty & fragrant bloom. A great socialist once said:     

 "While there is a lower class I am in it;/ while there is criminal class I am of it;/       

 while there is  a soul in prison, I'm not free."

           [Peace People in Isolation]—I shall take 3 samples of how a conven-   

 tional standard of living isolates peace people: relations in business; relations    

 in social work; "joining & sponsoring" activities. Quaker business people have

 always found their way difficult, & perhaps it will now be more a pacifist, non- 

 violent course among workers, partners, & customers was never easy. Govern-    

 ment demands to unify in defense add to difficulties. The nonviolent pacifist may    

 find one's self limited to small enterprises, having close participation with all con-     

 cerned. One must regularly do productive handwork to connect with one's neigh-

 bor in physical labor.

            That which created a profession of administering of aid to the poor is a       

 symptom of the sickness into which headlong "progress" has thrown us. The     

 heart's charity has always been too late, too little to undo society's wrongs.     

 There were lines of beggars outside of Warsaw churches & charity largely got   

 squandered; this wouldn't do in America. The people on relief are fulfilling their    

 indispensable place in society, the only one we know how to offer them. Recog-   

 nition of this has caused bitter [resentment] to recipients of public relief.      

            Thousands of the best & brightest earn themselves a comfortable living       

 by relieving the poor. Training in social work schools to my mind is mainly for   

 protecting prospective social workers against the vocational diseases of the        

 trade. Barricades of psychological devices are built around the social worker     

 for one's safety. Charity givers and taxpayers are barricaded behind the social   

 workers.

            Von Huegel says of Ettore Vernazza: "It was one of [his] deepest convic-    

 tions ... that only by actually living among the poor, poor yourself doing [their]     

 work ... only by such fraternal-paternal sympathetic identification can  such ser-

 vice really rise above the dreariness of officialism ... [& be] life directly touching 

 life." The persistent unprofessionalism of Friends' relief work has often been a            

 prime reason for effectiveness. This is lay-service, which corresponds to lay-   

 ministry, which is inseparable from our worship. [It sometimes leads to long-

 term] committed participation in the life of groups which modern systems have 

 abused and beaten.  

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13. The World Task of Pacifism (by Abraham John Muste; 1941) 

            About the Author— A. J. Muste, was born in 1885 and died in 1967. He 

 was a Dutch Reformed minister for 5 years, and a Congregational minister for 3; 

 [he left both churches because of a conflict of conscience, the latter church be-

 cause of his pacifist views]. In the early 1920s, A.J. became the Brookwood La-

 bor College's director in Katonah, New York, which taught the theory and prac- 

 tice of labor militancy. He also served as chairman of the new Fellowship of Re-    

 conciliation. He was deeply involved in labor strikes & politics. He devoted his

 life to causes that stem from a religious faith—peace action, racial equality, poli-

 tical & economic justice. Throughout his life, A. J. devoted himself to non-violent        

 social justice and change. He wrote 3 other pamphlets.

           A World is Breaking up—Many say that what's going on now isn't a war      

 but a revolution. Profound and sweeping changes are coming while we pacifists      

 still approach our tasks with a narrow & provincial vision, on a petty scale. I be-      

 lieve that the pacifist movement alone can qualify as "receiver" for the bankrupt      

 western world. The western order of life is breaking up spiritually, culturally, eco-     

 nomically, and politically. 

            The Renaissance & the Reformation sought the human spirit's liberation, 

 in particular from the Church. As a result, man was set at the center of the uni-

 verse; God was put out of the picture. Man whose spirit was to have been freed     at last from ancient restraint and superstition has not for centuries found himself

 less free than he is today: a cog in the industrial machine; a pawn of the fascist

 state; a tool of the Communist Party.

            [When men set themselves at the center of the universe & the pinnacle        

 of existence], then they can't respect & trust themselves or one another. We    

 have the material means for producing the good life in abundance; we fail or re-      

 fuse to devise ways for distributing these goods equitably. The State is the only      

 agency that can regulate production, so everywhere we get increasing state      

 economic intervention [in the form of unsold, wasted products]. Rivalries be-

 tween nations become intense; they devote increasing capital & energy to un-     

 productive war expenditures, which further contracts useful production of es-   

 sential goods. Not a single country has broken away from this cycle. A war-time       

 "communism" rations the few essential goods remaining and prepares for war

 [using the instruments of] dictatorship & totalitarianism; [that includes the United    

 States].  

            War Can't Halt Disintegration—War is itself an extreme expression of       

 our disintegration, of meeting difficulties with increasingly brutal strife. Neither          

 the poverty, exhaustion, disillusionment & humiliation of defeat, nor the nationa-         

 listic exultation & the moral let-down of victory contribute to the healing of the         

 nations. War can only serve to accelerate fearfully the process of impoverish- 

 ment & breaking up. The best chance to stop disintegration is early peace. It    

 It's only conceivable if nations recognize that war offered no way out of any real   

 problem and if they addressed the economic and cultural roots of war. Unfortu-

 nately, the chances that events will take this turn are not bright. An appalling    

 situation will exist at its close, regardless of victory or stalemate. 

            Men Turn to Opponents of War—The masses in the defeated countries    

 revolted against those in command during the war. They turned to the Commu-

 nists and Social Democrats who had been opposed to the war. Even in victor

 states, Socialists, Communists, Labor & varying degrees of pacifists were given

 the trust of the people & positions of responsibility. They rejected those prophe- 

 cized positive results falsely, and turned to those who foresaw the actual results

 and were brave and honest enough to speak out.  

             The revulsion against the war-makers will be as great in the victorious    

 countries as in the others. It seems unlikely that regimes in control during the

 war will survive its end. People will be unsure how to deal with the vastly diffe-    

 rent conditions that will exist at the same war's end. The Communists & Socia-       

 lists rejected imperialist wars but accepted violence & war on behalf of the wor-

 king class. I doubt anyone preaching about civil war & Utopia right after this war    

 will be regarded as a savior and liberator.  

            The movement to which we might turn to in hope must: have renounced     

 war and violence [before and during the war]; have renounced dictatorship and         

 promoted cooperation; be a profoundly religious movement. They need to be-      

 lieve that new people can be created. They will need a new faith that trans-       

 forms & saves them, gives them eternal resources to live for. Only the Christia-    

 tianity of Jesus can build such a movement.  

             Non-Violence & Social Change/ The Future of Pacifist Relief Work  

 Should the religious pacifist movement think of itself as a mass move-  

 ment  for achieving social change by nonviolence? [Either we accept the       

 responsibility of promoting love, non-violence, & community as] the basis of all      

 hman association, or we ought to stop saying it. Those of us with Jewish-   

 Christian prophetic roots can't evade the call to pray & work for the realization       

 of God's Kingdom on earth. We cannot keep saying "We suffer with you; but if   

 you resort to violence we shall have to stand aside." We pacifists must show    

 that evil can be overcome by non-violence.  

            Perhaps during and certainly after the war, there will be a vastly in-        

 creased need and demand for pacifist relief and reconstruction work. How se-    

 parate can relief & reconstruction be under the conditions that will pre-

 vail in Europe & elsewhere? [Our philosophy includes both in a concrete ex-

 ample of a new way of life.] We can admit that we have only been playing at

 building life on truth and love or humbly to undertake leadership of the new

 world as did William Penn.  

            Are we Adequate—Is it possible that religious pacifist forces can       

 measure up to the challenge? The western world may break up as did the       

 Roman Empire; small groups of pacifists might serve as islands of safety, sani-  

 ty and faith. We might get the chance to provide leadership in building a new   

 order if  we undergo the severe physical, intellectual, and spiritual disciplines       

 necessary to meet the situation.  

            For most people, turning to those who are calling for change would

 mean to admit inadequacy & accepting blame. We are a lot stronger now than   

 a score of years ago, in numbers & in intellectual comprehension and spiritual     

 development. [When we note the positive developments in the vocation of con-   

 scientious objectors and the widespread interest in the American Friends Ser-    

 vice Committee, we need not despair.  

            There are several experts who have long known that the old order was   

 thwarting them in the exercise of their abilities. They have no objections to wor-   

 king for the forces of the new day. Let men come out from under the delusion     

 that war is a possible solution for social problems, and we shall be surprised       

 at the resources in ordinary people and in intellectual leaders that will be re-    

 leased for the building of a new world. The Gandhi movement in India is giving    

 the world an example of  nonviolence's use on a mass scale. We may hope    

 that western people will be impressed by this oriental example and that coope-   

 ration between eastern & western nonviolence movements may come to have     

 a decisive influence on world events.  

            The Gandhi Movement—The Gandhi movement's fundamental charac-   

 teristics must also be part of the growing pacifist movement in the United     

 States. It is a religious movement. Pacifism is not a tool for occasional use. It is    

 a way of life. The program of personal training and discipline is an indispensible    

 part of the movement. It is an economic & social movement. I'm not convinced  

 that it is necessary to go back to a pre-machine spinning economy. It has 3 ele-    

 ments essential to an adequate non-violence movement.  

            It must clarify its thinking as to the kind of economic order to strive for. It   

 must experiment with schemes for a more decentralized human cooperative     

 way of living. The basic philosophy of economic life must be expressed & ac-   

 cepted out now & not "some day." Workers are hungry & cold now; they can't    

 wait for a revolution to do something about it. Communists saw that if the new            

 system doesn't represent the majority stance of the people, it has to be set up      

 by first violence & then regimentation. The Russian experience reminds us that        

 violence and coercion are self-defeating and regimentation leads to degraded    

 human beings.  

            Those who have entered into the spirit of community will be driven to     

 seek to give expression to their inner spirit in economic relationships. Manual     

 work has important effects on the individual spirit. Corporate manual activity is    

 a powerful agent for unifying pacifist groups within and also with other manual       

 workers. Gandhi's movement is a political movement. A western non-violence   

 movement must make effective contacts with oppressed and minority groups   

 and help them develop a non-violent technique. 

            Pacifist Strategy in War Time—During war some pacifists incline to-          

 ward an activist and militant stance; others incline toward a more quietist paci-        

 cifism. The latter would concentrate on works of mercy & reconstruction, rather      

 than direct opposition. We need to identify ourselves with the needs and suffe-   

 ring of our fellow citizens & worshippers. We cannot try to sabotage the activi-       

 ties of our fellow-citizens who feel called to fight. We seek to wean others from      

 the desire to make war, not to interfere with their war efforts. It is not disloyalty        

 to country, but obedience to a higher law & sovereign  "not of this world." The    

 negative act of refusal must be balanced with the positive acts of cooperative       

 living and brotherly service.  

            The movement as a whole shouldn't become quietist & non-political. That   

 might be an isolationist or escapist attitude. There will always be concrete issues    

 on which we must speak or risk being traitors to the truth. The fact that one may

 not be able to speak out without suffering for it, would not be sufficient to excuse      

 silence. Periodically the question of war aims or peace terms will or should be       

 raised. The masses will have confidence in us & turn to our leadership after the

 war to the extent we have given practical demonstrations of love, of our ability to

 build and organize and courage to speak the truth when it is unpleasant and

 dangerous to do so.  

            The multitudes said of early Quakers "With this man who refuses to buy  

 immunity, we shall ... compromise, give him special exemptions & a peculiar   

 confidence." George Fox said: "Lose not this great favor which God hath given    

 unto you, but that ye may answer [God's witness] in every man which witnesseth

 to your faithfulness." We aren't all called to witness the same way. Some are led      

 to a militant way, while others follow a quieter way. The former's motive must be 

 love; the latter's motive must not be fear or avoiding difficulties. [However we do

 it], we should be deeply and unreservedly committed to that life "which taketh

 away the occasion of all war."  

           Our task is always the positive one of witnessing to that life & of practicing

 it. To what extent can we compromise with existing economic & political in-   

 stitutions, adapt ourselves to the world's demands? If we do the compromi-      

 sing, there will be no end until our power is gone. If the state is adapting itself to      

 the demands of the spirit, then our "yeast" will not have lost its power & the lump           

 will be transformed into wholesome bread.  

           The Problem of Alternative Service—One well-respected conscientious    

 objector said: "Either you accept conscription, & do what the government forces

 you to do, or you refuse to be ordered & ... the government [has] to leave you          

 alone or put you in jail." [If alternative service results from] intellectual blurring of 

 the conscription issue & voluntary service, or from making it easier for the go-
 vernment or less difficult & unpleasant for ourselves, then there would be no dif-   

 ference of principle between alternative  service & any war service. 

            I don't believe we are confined to the choices of conscription, alternative

 service that caters too much to the war machine, or going to jail.  It has always

 been my conviction that non-registrants who forced the government to change

 radically or send them to jail, rendered a great service to the pacifism cause,    

 democracy & prophetic religion.  

            Fidelity to conscience at cost to the individual in the face of general op-   

 position & disapproval still has the power to win the respect of men who have   

 "that of God" in them. Every one has in one's conduct a line beyond which one   

 won't go no matter how absurd it may seem to others to draw the line at that  

 point. If such people take this course as a result of mature  reflection & an un-      

 reserved commitment to the leading of the Spirit, I believe they will do a great

 service. 

            It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of war-resistance. The na-      

 tions will not face their real problems, so long as they think resort to an arma-        

 ment boom & war constitutes a "way out." To  say that not participating in war,

 a tumor on the body politic, is "merely negative," is like saying removal of a    

 cancerous tumor of the physical body is "merely negative."  

           There is a sense in which war resistance is incidental in the pacifist way

 of life. Pacifism is a life of love & non-violence; it is to break out of the Self's 

 hard shell; to know deeply the unity of all in God; to express love at every mo-   

 ment, in every relationship. This is the love which binds man, maid, & family to-   

 gether. This must always find expression even where we must stand against    

 the majority. We have all the time got to be insisting on our right to "alternative      

 service." Even in jail, we should have to devise ways of rendering "alternative   

 service."  

            The individual pacifist is confronted with the needs of resisting human    

 customs & institutions & also creatively serving one's fellows. The movement    

 must deal vigorously & imaginatively with the "alternative service" problem."            

 Constructive pacifist service must be civilian service under private auspices &        

 control, not a civilian department of the government. Projects must grow out    

 of & must express religious pacifism's spirit. [In an age of regimentation] for         

 war, no greater service can be rendered than keeping alive volunteerism's spi-    

 rit. Projects must represent a sacrifice offered to our fellows, self-denial & suf-       

 fering, a sacrifice on behalf of principles and faith.  

            "Alternative service" can't be government financed or controlled & still be  

 a genuine pacifist alternative. We couldn't cooperate with such a program with-  

 out greatly weakening and obscuring our witness. If we are willing to pay for the    

 work-camp opportunities, we can hold before men the vision of the world-task of      

 pacifism. Work-camps may make a great contribution to the world task [of         

 building a life of love and nonviolence].  

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14. Religion and Politics (by Wilhelm Sollmann; 1941)  

           Introduction [About the Author]—Friedrich Wilhelm Sollmann's (1881-  

 1951) outspoken criticism & working for democracy catapulted him to the fore-       

 front of German politics at World War I's end. He was editor of a daily paper           

 in Cologne, 10 Rhineland periodicals, & a political expert with the German Ver        

 sailles delegation in 1919. He helped found the German republic, & influenced    

 the constitution's final draft. 

            He was a potent voice in the Reichstag for 15 years & twice Interior       

 Secretary. He helped organize passive resistance to French troops in the Ruhr      

 Valley. He educated people  in democratic citizenship as editor, columnist,         

 national news service director, & on an adult education board. He was the 1st         

 member of parliament to be attacked by Nazi stormtroopers. 

            Exiled in 1933, he became acquainted with members of the Society of    

 Friends at Woodbrooke in England, & now lives in the US. He taught at Pendle  

 Hill for 13 years. He believed that religion served as a moral compass for libe-      

 ral democracy so long as it retained vitality; this pamphlet outlines this view. 

            "A man who aspires after loving the meanest creature as oneself can't

 afford to keep out of any field of life ... Those who say that religion has nothing

 to do with politics do not know what religion is."       Mahatma Gandhi  

           "I can indeed imagine an ethical politician ... who conceives  principles of   

 statecraft so that they can coexist with moral law."      Immanuel Kant  

           "While I am as far as ever from being able to go into politics myself, I    

 should now hold that God may be just as truly revealed in a person who enters    

 this field and accepts conditions which I couldn't ... as a devoted evangelist."     

    Henry T. Hodgkin  

            Introduction [By the Author]—To ignore relations among the citizens

 of a nation & between nations is to be indifferent toward the integration or dis-    

 integration of society; it is to leave to irreligious people decisions about peace

 & war. With irresistible dynamic power politics thrusts itself even into the reli-

 gious field.  Religion, on the other hand, shows  itself as passive toward poli-   

 tics. Politics has been the poorer for lack of religious characters engaged in

 political leadership. The deep disillusionment with  the church is the result of

 its actions and inaction along certain lines.  

            A dictatorship sets out to train a whole nation in one line of thought &

 action. It must consider religious independence [of even small groups] as a poli-    

 tical danger, especially in respect to young people. Every religious person has a        

 higher loyalty [than the state].  Dictatorships must exclude religious freedom. 

 Separation of religion from politics is impossible. Religion can never identify it-

 self with a single political or social creed. Religion deals with the spiritual re-

 demption of humankind, an eternal task essential in all periods of history and      

 under all systems of political administration & economic organization.   

            Oppression, Ancient and Modern—Seldom or never has a church or a      

 body politic been free from oppression. "Concentration camps," secret police,   

 inquisitions, torture, gallows, the stake, the cross are neither German or Russi-      

 an peculiarities. In the very midst of the 18^th century capitalistic system, Marx      

 & Lenin were allowed to develop, print & spread their ideas in opposition to       

 that system. Perhaps never before did a ruling economic system accord such 

 liberal treatment to its opponents. Under the capitalistic order, political, social,       

 religious freedom & tolerance were more highly developed than ever before.        

 This freedom was greatest in the most capitalistic countries, Great Britain & the      

 US. Never have religious groups suffered under a capitalistic regime as they        

 suffer in the anti-capitalistic states.  

                                                       1

            Under competitive economic systems there is increased nationalism &     

 world-wide antagonism of our gigantic national economies. Under dictatorships,   

 the "community" is always restricted to 1 race or a single class. How does one      

 develop a non-competitive society without sacrificing individual freedom?

 Pope Pius XI's Quadragesimo anno encyclical combined criticism of liberal      

 Capitalism with a warning against the state's omnipotent power. Is democracy

 of the masses possible without dictatorship by the masses?  Belief in de-

 mocracy doesn't mean belief in the masses'  infallibility. How can Christians

 teach the dangers of deifying either  masses or leaders when many shun

 the company of political sinners? Jesus & his 12 didn't seclude themselves

 from [such people].  

            Security and Freedom—As Christians we must be alarmed that in the     

 struggle for social security millions of people are ready to let go their freedom.    

 However, in dictatorships security is available only to people who are ready for     

 total submission to the ruling political caste. One who keeps faith with ones

 ideals must pay for it with economic insecurity, imprisonment, death or exile.  

           How does one balance security and freedom in a political system?        

 This is the most difficult question under any political system; it is more deeply        

 rooted than any other in our material institutions & routine. An individual must       

 have higher responsibilities than obedience to class, party or a deified leader.    

 Oppression & persecution have been practiced under many systems and in all        

 nations. In nations, those which are victorious, prosperous, satisfied, with am-

 ple territories, produce a different system of government and economy from

 those which are defeated, impoverished, dissatisfied, and confined within nar-

 row boundaries.  

           Christian democracy must reject self-righteousness and self-complacen-        

 cy. The unprecedented power of modern dictatorships lies in their efficiency in   

 oppression, persecution, and corrupting propaganda. Only with our technical           

 instruments is a government able to control all aspects of public & private life     

 over a large territory. It is incorrect and unwise to talk as if there were only a    

 difference of degree between modern democracy and the totalitarian dictator-    

 ship; the cleavage between them is deep and impassable.  

            Criticism of Democracy—Criticism of democracy is as justifiable as is   

 discontent with other human institutions. Democracy believes that human  be-    

 ings and institutions may develop to a higher civilization only with a lot of indi-  

 vidual liberty. Even in its army, democracy envisions only an instrument of the    

 government [controlled by & made up] of democratic civilians. The soldier is the  

 dictator's ideal; war is the highest manifestation of the moral strength of indivi-

 dual & nation. [There are only soldiers: of labor; of food production]; uniformed

 youth; mothers producing the greater armies of the future.   

           The ruling philosophy excludes all intellectual & spiritual challenge [in or-    

 der to pursue] class war, race war, or world revolution. During the war in Eur-

 ope], not one political, pacifist, or religious group was able to work for peaceful   

 change in social & international relations on the basis of equality. Quaker relief    

 work has been possible only because these agencies have wisely limited their     

 activities to charity. In the dictatorships, a number of pacifists have already paid

 for their convictions with torture & death.  

                                                       2

            Not by chance but by logical consistency, the highest degree of religious       

 liberty and the widest variety of denominations exist in the US. On the whole,           

 religious tolerance in this country is worthy of democracy's spirit, & it could not

 have developed without political freedom. This should stimulate us to improve        

 democracy by making Christians more Christians and democrats more demo-       

 cratic. Neither defense nor improvement of democracy will be possible from the       

 basis of a negative and unproductive criticism. Democracy & Christianity have     

 in common the conviction and the experience that real improvement requires

 slow growth. Historically speaking, liberty and a full larder go hand in hand; dic-   

 tatorships look toward the democratic US for food stuffs.  

            Moral Growth is Slow—Democracy has never been a material issue         

 alone, nor will it ever be. In 1647, Colonel Rainboro imagined groups varying in   

 social standing, & demanded for the humblest the right to live his own life how-      

 ever difficult and troublesome it might be. That right and responsibility belong to      

 everyone. Does a class society or a classless society help more toward the      

 the attainment of [self-expression and redemption]? 

            It is doubtful whether a classless society offers more opportunity for indi-    

 vidual self-realization than a society with many social groups and class differ    

 ences. One may accept democracy or reject it, but one can't believe in potential     

 autonomy for all & still support political systems with super-classes, super-races,     

 and the deification of one political philosophy and its leader. Is the contrast be-      

 tween democratic ideals & reality any greater than that between Christian       

 ideal & action? Democracy's brotherhood of men & Christianity's Kingdom of

 God are very close together; we are no nearer to one than to the other. 

            All really great things in life grow slowly; this seems to be an unavoidable      

 law in nature, ethics, [& democracy]. There are no short cuts to reason, under-

 standing, justice, & love in the realm of human relations. Each generation of hu-     

 mankind can [safely] make only microscopic contributions to [humanity's]

 growth. History teaches us that premature actions are reactionary rather than       

 progressive in their effect, creating national and international explosions no less

 evil than belated action.  

            [Rash and vainglorious actions of dictators can lead to military machines,       

 conquest, racial fanaticism, class tyranny, and thinly disguised imperialism]. All

 too many authors have praised as dynamic progress what was merely the re-

 turn to a primitiveness which we had believed to have been overcome forever.     

 Christian democracy's essentials are the striving for Truth & the good of indivi-

 duals. Growing wisdom, vigilant patience, and courageous action are the trinity    

 of democratic needs and [the basis of] spiritual growth. 

            Democracy is Young—Inequalities our forefathers accepted as unal-        

 terable are now violently opposed by millions. Mass movements organized for

 the purpose of embodying economic equality, social justice, and social security

 in the solid structure of government are not as yet a century old. 100 years ago,

 [social] evils were accepted with indifference by nearly everyone including most    

 Christian churches. Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, & the US are still leading

 the world in material and spiritual standards. Are we disappointed in demo-

 cracy, or confused because of democratic life's complexity? It is very diffi-

 cult to be great in a democracy, where the short-comings of the most august

 leader must stand the harsh glare of public scrutiny.  

                                                       3

            In a democracy we must face life in all its contrasts of knowledge & igno-        

 rance, bravery and cowardice, tenderness & brutality, honesty and corruption.   

 Democracy means eternal struggle between a multitude of interests, creeds,     

 dreams. A democratic country never knows periods of rest, of settling down &        

 enjoying the achievements of the past. Every generation will have believers in        

 & prophets of a still better society, which will be proclaimed in the clear bright      

 atmosphere of intellectual freedom.  

            It is the lack of revealing criticism which deceives many well-meaning        

 intellectuals & even political scientists into becoming supporters of Communism    

 and Fascism. The present crisis of our civilization is caused by many forces: tre-   

 mendous productive capacity; lack of purchasing power; lack of national and     

 international cooperation; impoverishment of ethical & spiritual life;  lack of au-  

 dacity and imagination in [supporting democratic revolution]. 

            The remaining democracies are certainly more highly developed than

 any totalitarian system in all fields of human endeavor, save one. A dictatorship

 is better able to prepare for total war unhampered by public criticism than is a

 democracy. [A dictatorship's staying power] in a long war remains open to ques-

 tion.  The only recognizable achievement of dictatorships turns out to be their

 hindrance of all constructive work in all countries, dictatorship or democracy,

 [by preparing for and waging war].  

            Mental Impoverishment—There is a certain amount of truth to the the-   

 ory that Germany and Italy turned to dictatorship & militarism as their only op-      

 tion as "have not" nations, but propaganda has exaggerated it greatly. Germa-   

 ny has never been a "have-not" nation, nor will Germany ever be. Her people     

 have astonishing technical and scientific skill, discipline, order and thrift. The        

 theory of the "haves"& "have-nots" is more sentimental than realistic. "Have"      

 and "have-not" labels makes us susceptible to imperialistic arguments. The      

 existence of colonies would exclude the self-determination of the inhabitants

 of the colony. We must envision a worldwide federation of free people with

 equal rights to markets and raw materials.  

            The dictatorship's teaching is drill, not education. Free research is abo-      

 lished as well as free worship. The result is intellectual and spiritual indigence.  

 Modern dictatorships often have to use or abuse [at least the appearance] of  

 democratic methods. The same dictators who oppressed political religious &   

 racial minorities at home demanded equal rights for their nations in international   

 relations. Totalitarianism doesn't pay; the undercurrent of democratic resistance   

 is too strong. In spite of gigantic efforts they have only increased poverty within      

 the nations and fear among the nations.  

            How strong must the power of democracy be when 3 decades of wars,     

 civil wars, persecutions, terrorism have been unable to crush it. Dictatorships      

 pay reverence to the spirit of democracy, but they aren't able to understand  it.

 Vainly they try to realize the dream of happiness for all by force. Dictatorships

 will never achieve justice and peace. Their terrorizing corrupts all moral forces

 that work for peaceful evolution. Only in democracy are all free to  compete with      

 the dark forces which they have inherited from the past.  

            International Cooperation has Worked—People despair of internatio-

 nal cooperation after only a short-lived attempt to create international machi-

 nery for peace. The League of Nations failed because it was neither democra-

 tic nor universal, being based on the dominance of the victorious over the de-

 feated. The reluctance of the US to join deprived it of the most powerful and  

 experienced of the democratic countries. 

                                                       4

 

            The League of Nations included 60 of 65 existing sovereign nations. It    

 created the World Court in 1920 at the Hague. This court stands as the 1^st  at-         

 tempt to create world justice by law. One other success of the League was the

 Saar Territory's administration from 1920 to 1935. A legal & peaceful plebiscite

 was held in 1935; 90% of the mostly German population voted to rejoin the Fa-

 therland. 5 notable failures of the League to resolve conflicts worldwide are

 standard material in all peace groups, while the League's peaceful solution of

 the Saar conflict isn't so widely used. The temptation to yield to negative criti-

 cism is strong even in Christian pacifist circles.  

           Doing Justice to the League of Nations—Frequent doubts about inter-    

 national democratic cooperation is based on the Disarmament Conference's

 failure to achieve its aim. An international peace technique is completely new &

 lacks experience with the momentous question of how to reduce armament

 without endangering national security. How can all people achieve perma-

 nent peace? When I worked on disarmament, the literature presented practi-

 cally no technical answers to the technical questions. The 1st Disarmament    

 Conference will find a successor which will lead us another step further along

 the road to world community. The building up of an effective democratic peace

 machine is not the work of one generation.  

            [Failure to see any of the League's successes led to the negative  psy-      

 chology that Hitler's war of revenge was inevitable]. Parts of this militaristic

 treaty & its astronomical reparations were altered by Germany's passive resis-

 tance and patient diplomatic negotiations. It is incorrect to claim that no con-

 cessions were made and that therefore peaceful change did not work. 

            The peace treaty at Versailles was unjust and unwise, but [it led to some            successes], and Europe was a paradise compared with its present state. Ger-   

 many by abolishing the methods of international democracy deprived herself &     

 the world of a unique opportunity. A disarmed democratic Germany in an armed

 world would have been strong support to all friends of peace, democracy, and    

 Christianity. Such a Germany would have been better off than even a victorious    

 Germany after this costly war.  

            Need to Influence the Masses—Christian democrats are thinking of

 living the spirit of community in small groups. They consider it impossible to    

 permeate the existing large social units with a sense of brotherly solidarity. They

 may help individuals, but one may doubt they will ever influence larger section

 of society. Has Christianity a social & democratic message only for small      

 units of seekers or is the gospel capable of influencing large social units

 and nations? The power of Jesus' language & the truth of his parables would

 have been impossible without his knowledge of people.  

            Democratic education may be prepared in small cells, but it must radiate

 into the minds of many millions of people if it is to lead to action. The smallest    

 economic units & individuals are drawn into mass organizations for the defense

 of their interest. The relations between government and citizens, employers and    

 employees, can be reasonably adjusted and regulated only by well organized

 large units. Today an atomized, [totally individualistic society is unworkable. In a    

 democracy the only way to influence mass organizations is to work in & through

 them. Are we wise to leave leadership to religiously indifferent people or        

 enemies of religion and democratic rights?      What can we do to spread

 the spirit of Christian democracy among governments, political parties,    

 employers, workers?  

            Neither Slave nor Master—Abraham Lincoln said: "As I would not be a       

 slave, so I wouldn't be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy." Under    

 Fascism, National Socialism and Communism, the individual exists for the na-              

 tion's sake or for the party's cause. Christianity & democracy meet each other

 on the common ground of the individual's worth & dignity. In accepting & using   

 the democratic right of free organization we can't refuse it to any social group.   

 Free organization is as important as free worship, free assembly, & free speech  

 The power of the organization resides in the solidarity of their members. 

            Sound democracy has always been based on economic independence        

 of its citizens. Aristotle said: "Where some possess much, & others nothing,

 there may arise extreme democracy, or pure oligarchy; tyranny may grow out of

 either extreme ... it isn't so likely to grow out of a middle, nearly equal condition."

 [The recognition in the ancient & medieval world that some people weren't eco-   

 nomically independent (e.g. slaves, women, industrial workers, farmhands,       

 and serfs) made it consistent to grant democratic rights only to the economically    

 independent.  

                                                       5

            In America, at least the opportunity existed for all citizens to achieve eco-

 nomic independence by acquiring property. The 1776 army's poor rank & file,

 the small farmers, discontented laborers, & former indentured servants, fought

 for both liberty, property, just wages, & business ownership. The founders of the    

 republic based their constitution on individual liberty and property, seeing these

 2 as the basis of free citizenship. The founding fathers distrusted collectivism of

 money power as much as the collectivism of propertyless masses. They wanted

 to protect material and spiritual freedom against majorities, whether of voters or

 of economic power. The fusion of ideals with economic material advantages

 made the American dream a reality and attracted innumerable disowned men

 from Europe and from Asia.  

             Contrasting Status—Valid education for Christian democracy is impos-

 sible if we gloss over the fact that gigantic private economic powers are threate-

 ning freedom by economic despotism. A conflict between massed property on

 one side & massed propertyless people on the other might well be fatal to our    

 democracy. Massed property and massed proletariat work as destructive forces

 against a balanced material and spiritual democracy. Privileged classes fearing

 loss of power turn against others' democratic rights, while the unprivileged be-

 come hostile toward a system which they feel has done nothing for them.  

            Big businessmen may hold the opinion that certain labor activities are    

 damaging the general economic status, but may find their own economic liberty

 lost under a dictatorship. On the other hand, in many countries large groups of

 workers helped destroy democracy by their propaganda of the proliteriat. Marx

 & Engels expected the middle class to be ruined and to join forces with labor

 against capital. Even ruined middle class people remained middle class in their

 thinking and did not want to be united with prolitarians.  They dash into the anti-   

 democratic camp to escape communism; then all social groups end up losing

 their political and economic freedom. There is no rule by the masses, but simply

 the dictatorship of party militia and bureaucracy. 

            [The deep disintegration of Europe had more to do with class hatred &    

 unrestrained materialism in social & international relations than with the Ver-       

 sailles Treaty]. We must overcome the social & spiritual disintegration out of

 which the treaty grew. We can't blame one treaty, or one country, one dictator,

 or one system alone. We have lost moral direction and are therefore unable to

 adjust our human relations to current material conditions. We must attack the

 total confusion with the total truth of Christian democracy [i.e. the best demo-

 cracy has to offer].  

           It is obvious that democracy's problems in the US are not basically diffe-

 rent from those in Europe [between the 2 world wars]. Big employers & corpo-

 rations distrust democratic development, especially taxation, social security, and

 the economy. Farmers and middle classes feel pinched and are afraid of losing

 their property by economic convulsions. 

            The present political indifference of most American workers is a deplor-

 able fact. Increasing participation of the workers in the public administration and          increasing cooperation between management and workers require education in    

 citizenship. [A citizen's responsibility means that employers are responsible to

 and for employees, and employees are responsible to and for the prosperity of

 the plant in which one earns one's living]. More rights means more responsibi-              

 bility; that is the moral law of democracy.  

                                                        6

            Inevitable Change—The personal attitudes of most Americans is demo-   

 cratic. It's difficult, perhaps impossible, to propose a definition to satisfy all those

 who believe in it. It is impossible for any government or political party to suc-

 cessfully picture a democratic utopia, for in a democracy there would never be 

 unity in regard to such a dream. Democracy is eternal evolution, change, strug-

 gle.  Democratic government will always be a compromise between various

 interests & insights. Democratic government programs are bound to be more

 vague than those in dictatorships, but with longer lastng achievements.  

            The wars in Europe, Africa, and Asia already have visible economic &    

 social consequences. Currencies break down; debts rise; the financial structure      

 is upset. Foreign markets are lost through blockade and counter-blockade.  Pro-

 duction is geared toward the destruction of other nations' wealth. The war will 

 teach every child to trust in force & to crush their opponents. No country, no poli-

 tical system has escaped the [chaotic] cyclone. In the past 50 years there have

 been at least 25 major international conflagrations. No large country can claim

 to be free from responsibility for them. All people are involved. 

            Powerful & Undefeated—Democracy calls upon different social ele-

 ments in every country to solve economic problems by cooperation of all the na-        

 tion's social groups, & to solve international conflicts by international coopera          

 tion. The world must become a federation of free states, with free discussion &

 free decision-making. As long as the ideals of the rights, brotherhood [& sister-

 hood] of all live in us, Christian democracy isn't dead. The citizens of occupied    

 Denmark showed admirable moral resistance through their democratic spirit.

 The totalitarian aim has no appeal for free people. We should tolerate restric-

 tions on civil rights only in time of national need, not as retreat from democracy's    

 principles. Without faith in democracy we can not save or improve it.  

            Strong Leaders of Free Citizens—Democracy is compatible with strong      

 leadership. No democracy can stand weak leadership for long. Democracy is

 lost without action, and action requires leadership. It is technically impossible

 and it ruins democracy to turn over every momentous decision to the nation's

 masses. Elected officials may show a more balanced judgment than millions of      

 citizens swept away by propaganda & prejudice. We must be careful not to trust

 too much in plebiscites as such.  

            The US Presidency is an example of powerful leadership in a democracy.

 The President's powers here are broader than elsewhere. As the voice & symbol

 of national unity, he is leader of the greatest democratic federation. Weak Presi-

 dents were intimidated by by so much power. They haven't known how to use it.    

 [Jefferson is admired, even though] he acted unconstitutionally in purchasing    

 Louisiana. Andrew Jackson used dictatorial methods, yet history now sees him

 as modern American mass democracy's first leader. Abraham Lincoln pushed

 his executive powers to the limit & beyond during the war to save the democratic    

 federation. The results of restrictions & violations of the forms of democracy in

 national emergency depends on the [democratic] spirit which creates & controls

 such restrictions.  

            The Spreading of Facts/ The Call for Action—Many Americans doubt

 the wisdom of their government in Washington; very few question the strength

 and future of American democracy. Democracy's life rests with the rank and file

 of the citizens. When it loses their support democracy is doomed. The democra-

 tic way of life recognizes that one lives not by bread alone, but that one needs    

 bread first to live on.  

            Work is the first necessity; without work no consumption is possible. Fear

 of the term propaganda should not prevent us from spreading the facts about

 how democracy is responding  to the citizens' interests. While democratic free-

 dom grants the right to wide criticism it should also include the duty of doing jus-

 tice to the existing administration. One- sided criticism is destructive and will

 result in democracy's collapse.  

            Modern Christian democracy's program includes: work for all; develop-        

 ment of useful production; no monopolies; private emergency insurance; arbi-       

 tration between social groups; arbitration between nations; regional and even-

 tually world federation of nations; gradual disarmament and international police

 force; voluntary national and international cooperation; liberty for the individual's     

 growth; individual liberty combined with powerful, responsible leadership; new

 concept of moral statecraft; seeking national and international solidarity; stress

 universal character of Christianity.  

            Dictators' aims always include waste of material & human activities; they          

 exclude cooperation of people with different ideals. In dictatorship there can't be    

 full use of all economic or spiritual productive forces. Most of the people who       

 complain about party machines and their bosses haven't expended nearly the

 same amount of time, effort, & enthusiasm in trying to wipe out these machines

 as politicians & racketeers have given to building them. Aggressive energy is

 pitifully lacking in many religious groups today. When people loved justice more

 than peaceful acquiescence they have attacked corrupt politicians, and the

 machine have been defeated.  

                                                        7

            Religious denominations have a task in educating democracy which       

 can't be tackled by other groups. The churches offer an opportunity for groups    

 across all sorts of economic interests and social standing to meet on neutral        

 ground. Nowhere else could the great moral issues of democracy be discussed

 better or more profoundly than in Christian denominations, with their goals that

 are similar to democracy.

            Actually, every religion could make a vital contribution by teaching that 

 democracy like every moral effort demands a hard heroic, patient struggle, that

 that no democracy is better than its citizen as no church is better than its mem-

 bers, that each must conquer the war lord in one's own breast. No democracy,

 no religion lives & acts in its true spirit if it doesn't work for solidarity in the

 whole of human society. Religion without democracy will be enchained. Demo-

 cracy without religion, without its deepest spiritual forces, will perish from dry 

 rot. How are Christians ready not only to preach but to act, to teach, to

 write, to organize, to administer, to lead in  politics?

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15. War is the Enemy (by A. J. Muste; 1942)

            About the Author—A. J. Muste, was born in 1885 & died in 1967. He 

 was a Dutch Reformed minister for 5 years, & a Congregational minister for 3;

 [he left both churches because of a conflict of conscience, the latter church be- 

 because of his pacifist views]. In the early 1920s, A.J. became director of the 

 Brookwood Labor College in Katonah, New York, which taught the theory &

 practice of labor militancy. He was also chairman of the new Fellowship of Re-

 conciliation. He was deeply involved in labor strikes & politics. He devoted his

 life to causes that stem from a religious faith—peace action, racial equality,

 political & economic justice. Throughout his life, A. J. devoted himself to non-   

 violent social justice & change. He also wrote PHPs, #13, 64, 124.  

            1. The Way of Non-Violence—It is a prerequisite of fruitful thought & 

 discussion in such a crisis as the present [war] that we should think of each            

 other, pacifist & non-pacifist, as fellow-searchers for truth, not as adversaries.    

 Diverse positions contain something valid, a fidelity to the truth. Recognizing        

 this is a way of seeking at-one-ment, which isn't appeasement. Avoiding clearly

 defined issues & differences doesn't make for reconciliation. It is never built on

 a lie or half-truth.  

            Healing coolness & balm comes into any situation the moment nobody is    

 pretending or holding anything back; the poison is sucked out of difficult situa-

 tions. We owe it to our neighbor to bear faithful witness to the truth as we see it,    

 holding nothing back, in nought equivocating or being subtly snobbish, & not try-

 ing to beat our truth into their brains with arguments. There is no greater honor

 one can pay another, no greater service one can render, than to share with them

 such truth as has been vouchsafed to one.  

            That pacifists should be not mere talkers, but practical friends & helpers,

 can't be too often or too emphatically stated. We have no desire to obstruct our

 fellow-citizens in their performance of what they see as patriotic duty. "There is

 a time for silence." We mustn't press impatiently for immediate   results like the

 child who sows seeds one day & digs them up the next to see if they are sprou-

 ting. We must be content to let it make its own way in the minds and hearts of

 others.  

            The idea that in wartime there should be no preaching of our philosophy

 & gospel, and that this would somehow make for reconciliation, seems to me

 unsound. Suspending religious pacifist analysis of war will mean that what paci-

 fists regard as false & dangerous ideas are presented, but no criticism and no    

 alternatives. If the majority someday agrees with us, will they not ask: "Why did

 you keep still while we were engaged in senseless slaughter?       Why

 should we have any special confidence in you who took pains to keep

 your counsel until everybody agreed with you? 

            The time to witness against tragic, self-righteous distortion of the truth is

 when it is most widely proclaimed and believed. What all need finally is to be

 able to believe in themselves, in truth, in an inexorable moral order, in the God

 of Love. [Those faithful to] the Word of God and Truth [to the end of their lives],

 have always been the great reconcilers.  

            The reconciliation which must take place in our own minds and spirits is    

 promoted when we try to think through each problem with our fellows with the    

 innocence, freshness, childlikeness, & humility which Jesus  taught. We must

 seek to divest ourselves of any notion that our knowledge  is sufficient and final;

 of prejudices and inappropriate emotions. Our unwillingness to be reconciled to

 the truth, which is a manifestation of God, is one of the fundamental causes of

 division in life, of the divided self, the divided human family. When we think of

 our insights as having finality, as something to be possessed and defended, we

 set up a wall against God who is the Source of Light and whom we can receive

 only if we become infinitely receptive like little children. 

            Dr. Trigant Burrow speaks of a "subtle attitude of secret self-propitiation" 

 "... a delusive sense of personal approbation" in people & in social groups as a

 most pernicious danger to society. The self that thus tries to justify itself and

 which sees itself standing over against others, rather than being limited & sus-

 tained by them in the attempt to apprehend truth, necessarily sees the world,

 any problem, in a partial, distorted sense, not as a whole & objectively. It can't

 function with its whole, undivided attention. This self has only a "specialized,

 restrictive use of its part-brain."  "One needs to encompass this [world] problem

 of ones own making with the whole of oneself."  

            Now in the degree that we have divested ourselves of inner resistance to

 the truth & have developed a readiness to receive it from whatever source, we

 are also enabled to "speak the truth in love." We can hope that our fellows may

 see and come to welcome the light we have. There is no reconciliation through

 the medium of any partial love, but only through a love prepared to pay the final

 price. Until individuals & nations are prepared to sacrifice as much in practicing    

 reconciliation & non-violence as they sacrifice in pursuit of war, we can't reason-

 ably expect an end of wars. What as yet uncalculated sacrifice in prayer,

 giving, witnessing, renunciation of war are we called to, so that in us the

 world's enmity may be slain?  

            2. The Non-Pacifist Position—We know what it means to resort to     

 modern, planetary war. We recognize that we share a large responsibility for        

 things having come to their present pass. We can't believe that anything except       

 decisive defeat in war can stop inhuman, brutal dictatorships. We believe we       

 can fight without bitterness and hate. If we win, we shall make a wiser, more       

 Christian use of our victory than we made the last time.  

            It's a dangerous delusion to think that if the United Nations win, we shall

 make a much better use of our opportunity than we did the last time. The US

 has followed a course similar to that of 1914-17. We aim at a decisive victory

 that will give us a much greater relative superiority than the last time. And,

 having reached that point with fatal precision, a miracle will happen. [The mo-       

 mentum and direction nations have pursued in this century thus far will sud-      

 denly change]. We shall get off this road & strike boldly out in another direction.      

 What reason have we to believe that after following the same foolish    

 and disastrous behaviors, we shall suddenly change & follow new, wise,      

 and successful ones?  

            There is increasing concentration of power in the executive, regimenta-    

 tion of the population, and gearing of all energies to war purposes; it is these        

 developments that are decisive. After the war, [there is likely to be a] catastro-   

 phic spiritual let-down. If writing the peace & policing the situation proved

 too much after the last war, what reason to expect a different result now? 

 This time, [in terms of disarming], our statesmen frankly say that we don't think

 in terms of no more war following the present, that we must disarm "the aggres-       

 sors" even more completely than before, while we remain "suitably protected."      

 It seems to us to require a grave or a great simplicity to suppose that this can       

 spell aught but disaster for us and humankind.  

            A word about the contention that war can be waged without hate and bit-       

 terness. Expressions calculated to stir up hate & contempt aren't absent from

 Mr. Churchill's references to the Germans. No apologies are being offered for

 the indiscriminate bombing of women and children. Hatred for the Japanese 

 has been fairly general in the US in recent weeks. If people do all that is re-

 quired in modern war, without being aware of any hate and anger, then we are

 faced with a grave psychological and moral problem.  

            A complete splitting of personality has taken place. There is no relation-       

 ship between what one feels and what one does. A columnist urged that we            

 need not grow hysterical with hate & that it might become a military necessity to

 blot out whole Japanese cities from the air. [In this state], there'll be no limit to

 the deeds we may perform, the havoc that may be wrought. And what will be

 the personal & social reactions as the divorce between inner state & out-      

 ward act becomes more complete—& when one returns to reality & con-        

 templates with unveiled eyes what one has done [in war]?  

            People of goodwill choose war because it seems the only way to prevent     

 a diabolical, demonic tyranny over all, the only chance to build a decent world.

 We try to calculate the consequences of our decisions & actions in complex so-

 cial situations. But we are human and fallible and can see only a short distance

 ahead & calculate only a few of the consequences of our decisions, and these    

 imperfectly. 

            I may not be fully aware of the consequences of my refusal to support

 the US government in war. Neither can non-pacifists calculate forces released

 over which they have no control. Aldous Huxley writes: "It's by no means im-

 possible to foresee, in the light of past historical  experience, the sort of conse-

 quences that are likely ... to follow certain sorts of acts ... The consequences ...

 [of] large-scale war, violent revolution, unrestrained tyranny & persecution are

 likely to be bad."  

            In a real sense conscience, the Inner Light, is the only guide among the     

 complexities of life. The only thing we can know is that evil can't produce good,

 violence can produce only violence, and love is forever the only power that can    

 conquer evil. I started in the last war as a Christian pacifist. As a result largely

 of experiences in the labor & radical movement, I abandoned my religion and

 my pacifism, & became a Marxist-Leninist.  

            The pacifists of the last war, ill-informed and unsophisticated though we    

 were, somehow sensed what the war was really about, sensed what would

 come after the war. I was more experienced, but still I drifted into a complete        

 opportunism which brought outward confusion and inner disintegration. If one

 moves away from the center and the law that evil can be overcome only by           

 dynamic, sacrificial good, one may know and see vastly more, but it will all be       

 out of focus, blurred.  

            I became convinced that in spite of all the brains, the vast energies, the     

 titanic sacrifices, the effort to establish democracy by dictatorship, brotherhood

 by terrorism and espionage, fullness of life by war and violence, left you with

 dictatorship, terrorism and strife. No less than 3,000,000 peasants were de-

 stroyed in the forcible collectivization of Soviet agriculture. The Soviet press        

 reveals that the upper 11% or 12% of the population receives approximately    

 half the national income. 

            Demoralization and defeat overtook the modern revolutionary move-     

 ments in all other important centers. In the 1920s & 30s people were practically          

 unanimous in pointing out that WWI had miserably failed to accomplish the

 good it was supposed to bring. Many college professors are troubled about the

 "souls" of their students, because the students still believe what other profes-

 sors told them about war a few years ago.  

            3. A Pacifist Proposal—It is inevitable that reasonable and conscienti-

 ous people should feel a concern for the problem of a "just and durable peace.

 Unless one can believe in such a goal, war, wholesale slaughter, becomes ut-

 terly irrational & completely immoral, "the sum of all evils." We have stated our

 disbelief that we can strike out in an entirely new direction after following the

 same old fatal path. The only thing religious pacifists can say to our country

 now is: "Stop the war, put up your sword before it's too late.  There is no hope

 in a peace dictated by 'totalitarian' powers; nor in a peace dictated by 'demo-

 cratic' powers. Try the Way of Reconciliation."  

            The US should negotiate immediately with all nations, & should: share        

 responsibility for building world government; invest billions otherwise devoted to       

 war, in a plan for rehabilitating Europe & Asia; not try to fasten war-guilt on any

 nation or group of nations; Work with all people toward building the good life

 which resources & modern technology makes possible. Subject nations of India,    

 Philippines, Puerto Rico, Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, Holland, & other

 subject people, must be given an opportunity to determine their own destiny.  

            World government should administer the affairs of those not ready for        

 self-government. All people should be assured of:  equitable access to resour-

 ces & markets; immigration & emigration should be internationally controlled;

 establish equal opportunity in the US in housing, land use, health & education;

 repudiate racism and call on others to do the same; immediate & drastic reduc-

 tion of armaments.  

            In power politics, [nationalism, and materialism], this seems like a fantas-

 tic proposal. [Telling the Germans "The world has no choice except a crushing,

 decisive victory" [echoes] Hitler & keeps them fighting behind him, & has them    

 believing that the alternative to a victory behind Hitler is "something worse than    

 Versailles." Our military "success" in separating the German people from the

 Kaiser gave us Hitler in place of the Kaiser.  

            Our proposal for a dynamic peace [process] at this time is dismissed by

 non-pacifists as "unrealistic." But unless a spirit of humility and repentance, a

 high spiritual [rebirth], imaginativeness and courage animate the victorious peo- 

 ples; unless the German and Japanese people feel they can trust us and are

 freed from fear and resentment, there can be no good peace after this greatest

 and most destructive of all wars.

            If we don't wait with proposals for a creative peace until the spiritual ener-

 gies of this generation are utterly exhausted, we may yet find salvation. There is

 a possibility that to such dynamic peace action by the US now as we have pro-

 posed, there would be a tremendous, spontaneous response [from other na- 

 tions], which simply could not be ignored. Why should so many Christians be

 so sure that Reconciliation would not work?  

            [The recent successes in Asia] have the Axis Powers & Japan in particu-       

 lar feeling that world-domination is in their grasp, & nothing except crushing mili-    

 tary defeat can keep them from attaining that prize. [If full, desperate strengths of

 all concerned] are to be thrown into this war before it ends, it must result in a

 stalemate of exhaustion or a "victory" of one group of embittered people over a

 group of despairing people [in the midst of] a devastated planet. This isn't a goal

 for which human beings can rationally fight.  

            Now when they feel that the stigma of inferiority has been somewhat re-

 moved and that they could negotiate as equals, the Japanese and German peo-       

 ple may be more willing & able to discuss a just peace than before. It is reason-

 able to suppose that multitudes in these & other lands are aware of the incalcu-       

 lable costs of continuing. Working together with other peoples at utilizing the

 earth's resources to build the good life for all, offers them more than Hitler & the    

 Japanese militarists, even if victorious, can bring them. We will gain more than a

 victory of the United Nations can bring us.  

            4. If the Way of Reconciliation is Rejected?—Howard Brinton reminds       

 us our pacifism isn't primarily that of objectors to wars or of peace propagan-

 dists. Support for pacifism rests finally upon "arguments based on the soul's

 direct insight into the nature of Truth and Goodness, revealed through Divine-

 Light and Life. [Through this revelation], a certain way of life is intuitively re-   

 cognized as good & with this way war is seen to be incongruous. We are sus-

 tained by the historical evidence that the "little fellowships of the holy imagina-       

 tion which keep alive in men sensitivity to moral issues" & faith in the Eternal

 Love, may indeed be more effective than surface appearances indicate. Isaac    

 Penington wrote: "Whoever desires to see God's Peaceable Kingdom brought

 forth in the general must cherish it in the particular."  

            The trouble with the world today is precisely that men have come to be-   

 lieve that "the only means which work are the material and the only goal attain-

 able is also material. The physical world is mastered through physical force.         

 Developing a consciousness of the reality of spiritual things & generating moral

 power is the supreme need of such a world. 

            [This might be done through] small groups of men and women, who re-   

 nounce outward things, strip down to bare essentials, and give themselves to

 the task of "purifying the springs of history which are within ourselves," to "that

 secret labor by which those of a little faith raise, first of all in themselves, the

 level of humankind's spiritual energy." Though we be driven still further "out of

 this world," into seeming futility, confined to very simple living in small coopera-

 tive groups and giving ourselves to silence, meditation, prayer, discipline of the

 mind and spirit, we shall hold to the Way.  

            "Fear not, little flock. It is your Father's good pleasure to give unto you

 the kingdom. And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age. For     

 God has not given us a spirit of fearfulness, but of power and love and disci-           

 pline" [Lk. 12:32; Mt 28:20b; II Timothy 1:7].

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16. Peacemakers’ Dilemma: Plea for a Modus Vivendi 

        in the Peace Movement (by Bertram Pickard; 1942)

           About the Author—Bertram Pickard (1892-1973) belonged to a genera-

 tion of Friends who helped to redefine the nature of Quaker international work 

 from 1920-1940. In the aftermath of the 1^st World War he played a big role in 

 broadening the Quaker approach to peacemaking, encompassing conflict reso-

 lution through peaceful settlement of disputes & conflict prevention through in-

 stitution-building internationally. He served as Secretary of the Friends Peace 

 Committee, London YM (1921-1926) & Secretary of Friends Geneva Center 

 (1926-1940).   

           Modus Vivendi—[A temporary [working] arrangement ... pending final

 agreement or resolution of conflict].  

            INTRODUCTORY—It is right that in so complex a matter as the elimina-       

 tion of war and the achievement of peace there should be strong differences of      

 opinion and emphasis among peace workers and many peace organizations. It

 is right that there should be diversity & variety of approach. But there is some-

 thing wrong when the Peace Movement is rent by strife within; when leaders in    

 different camps accuse each other of being "the greatest obstacle to peace." 

           This happened in England & the US over different controversies. The de-       

 bate is over the uses to which American coercive power should be put to.        

 Sometimes a Peace Movement group throws its political weight in with that of    

 nationalists, isolationists, or imperialists.  The Peace Movement everywhere

 has been so sharply divided on the question of force that a united political po-

 licy has been generally impossible, is a matter for regret and earnest inquiry.  

            Perhaps such political deadlock in the Peace Movement is inevitable;  I      

 don't think so. I am concerned to contribute to the clarification of the issues, &       

 to the discovery of a modus vivendi between different elements in the Peace     

 Movement. I have over 20 years of 1st-hand knowledge of the Peace Move-

 ment in England, Switzerland (14 years at Geneva), and the US. There is a

 duty to bring our contributions to the common stock, and to venture even some

 thinking aloud, since by that means we may stimulate one another to seek and

 find new truth.  

            Two Kinds of Pacifism—"Pacifism" has a double meaning [and there        

 are many different kinds of pacifism]. There are 2 very different kinds of paci-      

 fism. The definition given in the 1929 Concise Oxford Dictionary is surprising:        

 "The doctrine that the abolition of war is both desirable and possible." It is not        

 at all the meaning we usually give pacifism in England & America; this is more

 of a continental European meaning. In this paper, "pacifism" may be variously

 qualified as "absolute," "radical," "religious."  

            [The main term we will use is] "integral pacifism." It's defined negatively        

 as the refusal to support actively, the organized slaughter of human beings, and      

 positively, as a whole way of positive living which includes a belief in, and prac-

 tice of, the use of spiritual weapons in meeting violence and evil. This integral

 way is inherently difficult, and pacifism is powerless to effect large-scale politi-

 cal policies, when true pacifists are few and far between. 

            Pacifists are not passive. There is a type of pacifism which holds that

 human reason, if properly developed & released through education, can be tru-

 sted to generate cooperation rather than aggression. Howard Brinton writes:

 "Everyone has within [oneself] a potential Hitler as well as a potential St. Fran-

 cis. [One] must accordingly rise to a higher level of life by long, hard struggle

 involving severe self-discipline."  

            Pacifism: No Immediate Political Policy—Few of those who profess    

 pacifism have submitted themselves to this discipline. Howard Brinton asks,    

 "How can [one] claim to overcome evil in others by non-violent methods    

 before [one] overcomes the evil in [oneself]?" And effeminacy is no antidote           

 to the violence and aggressiveness in men. Albert Edward Day wrote: "Pacifism

 can never be made a political strategy except in a nation of pacifists," i.e. not in

 any foreseeable future. After 70 years of success in large-scale political applica-

 tion of pacifism in William Penn's Holy Experiment, "the demands of the British    

 government, the injustice inflicted on the Indians ... & the belligerency of Scotch-

 Irish settlers ... induced Quaker legislators to withdraw from politics in order not

 to compromise their peace policy."  

                                                1

            Does Peace Depend Upon Pacifism?/ The Organization of Peace—

 So far as elimination of the institution of war and the substitution of a system        

 of law are concerned, the evidence suggests that humankind is steadily moving

 in that direction. There are signs that the suicidal character of total war is deve-

 loping a biological fear of war which may well speed up the change in behavior

 as a means to race survival. We must be careful not to exaggerate this tenden-

 cy, nor to expect mere fear of consequences to play a cardinal role. Internation-

 alists pin their faith on the political organization of order in the world through a

 League of Nations, Federal Union, etc. Socialists argue that no peace is possi-

 ble without radical social changes by agreement or by force [if necessary].  

           THE "COLLECTIVE SYSTEM"—The 3 basic problems in substituting

 law for war are: securing justice; applying [fair] force; promoting supra-national

 loyalty.What would absolutely just positions of [intra-national or interna-       

 tional affairs look like]? Approximate justice is the best that can be attained.        

 What would approximate justice look like?       What relative influence           

 should Germany, France, & England have, in justice, on continental Eu-

 rope's affairs?  In a dispute, [the options are] negotiation, arbitration, or fight.

 [If ABCD are involved in a balancing of power, with A & C allied against B & D,

 for non-pacifists] there is only 1 way out of a vicious circle. Whatever force ex-

 ists should be used jointly by A,B,C,D, to restrain those guilty of illegal violence.  

            In any "Collective System" there must be agreement: not to resort to            

 force to get desired ends; to accept approximate justice decided by a 3rd party;       

 on machinery to effect impartial decisions; to accept changes in the status quo;

 on combining power to restrain illegal violence. Any "collective system" must aim

 to achieve a more or less stable political equilibrium by means of procedures for    

 effecting peaceful change of the status quo & procedures for preventing or sup-

 pressing illegal violence. The peace plans put forward by the 2 best-known Qua- 

 ker thinkers—William Penn & John Bellers—contain such provisions.  

            [Penn's Holy Experiment & his] "Plan for the Peace of Europe" [differ be-   

 cause the 1st] was legislated for pacifists & near-pacifists, whereas the 2nd was 

 legislated for a continent of warring princes. His political sense suggested to

 him that a Europe composed of separate and warring sovereignties would never

 pass from anarchy to law & order except through a cooperative process, inclu-

 ding cooperation to "compel" compliance with the law. Pacifist critics generally

 accept the concept of international police power, but then feel duty-bound to op-

 pose steps designed to strengthen the cooperative & responsible use of power.  

            A "Collective" System: In Practice/ A Personal Experience—Some

 who are not necessarily opposed to the basic concept of "collective security" ar-       

 gued that, under current conditions, any application of "sanctions" might spell       

 "collective insecurity." The question pacifists must face is whether there should

 have been more coercion or less, in the face of the "aggressions" which did take

 place. Coercion was only to be used when a state refused all forms of peaceful    

 settlement and was using armed force. 

            Up till 1924, I believed that somehow or other the League should dis-           

 pense altogether with the coercive forces deemed to give security and defense

 to nations in their separate existence as single states. In 1924, I changed my    

 opinion, when an attempt was made to advance on the 3 fronts of Arbitration,

 Security, and Disarmament. I believe that if the oil embargo  had been applied

 and the Suez Canal closed, there would have been armed conflict with Italy and

 the Fascist regime would have been brought down. One cannot help feeling that

 such action would have strengthened the "collective" idea. While I couldn't op-    

 pose the closing of the canal, I also could not take up arms against Italy on be-

 half of law and order. 

            The issue, in the absence of widespread pacifism, wasn't between peace           

 and war; it was between one kind of war which went on cruelly in Abyssina and

 Spain, and another kind of warfare waged by nations collectively on behalf of a

 victim of aggression. It seems to me that those whose conscience permits and

 obliges them to employ armed forces for national defense had much better use

 it for common rather than purely national ends. I think there will always be legiti-

 mate differences of opinion between pacifists as to which forms of coercion ap-

 proximate police action & which don't, i.e.  which can be used and which can't.     

                                                 2

    

            PARENTHESIS ON POLICE ACTION—It is extremely unlikely that the    

 problem of serious, deadly, destructive coercion can be avoided as an ever re-       

 current factor in an International Police Force and world government. The pro-

 blem of the equalization of privilege as between the peoples of the world is a

 very great & knotty one. In the absence of coercive power, what would pre-       

 vent a mass movement of the under-privileged toward "places in the

 sun?"      

            It's obvious that unjust distribution of this world's goods is preserved by     

 the power of the State's police. Integral Pacifists too often enjoy the many privi-

 leges which flow from an unjust distribution of wealth, and leave to others the    

 unpleasant policing tasks which prevent such conditions from degenerating in-

 to violence. We are only entitled to stand aside from disagreeable & dangerous

 civic duty if we try to meet evil & violence by alternative methods which [take as

 much commitment] as the cruder methods and if we do not deny the existence

 of violence or postpone dealing with it.

             If violence in [a nation's] social life is serious, how can it be ima-

 gined that control of international and interracial relations  is, by some

 magic, easy? [Nationalistic] ferocity must be held in check if international rela-

 tions are to pass from jungle anarchy to law. Privileged groups will set up insti-

 tutions of self-government including the instruments of enforcing law and order.

 This will involve progressive substitution of armed power's clumsy coercion,

 with those subtler [motivations] connected with livelihood and self-respect.  

            THE PACIFIST DILEMMA—It may be damaging to the cause pacifists        

 have at heart if Friends insist upon opposing the lesser of 2 evils (collective   

 coercion) at the grave risk of perpetuating the greater evil [of violent oppres-   

 sion]. [Opposing lesser evils] involves the dilemmas of: withdrawal from politi-   

 cal cooperation when political judgment indicates a necessary & non-pacifist        

 action by the community; disavowal of sound political judgment to give an ap-

 pearance of moral consistency; or abandonment of the personal pacifist posi-

 tion in order to implement the political judgment. These dilemmas can't be es-

 caped so long as pacifism fails to win allegiance of the overwhelming majority    

 of people.  

           The justifications for a pacifist to withhold cooperation are a matter of con-

 science and categorical imperative and includes the non-pacifist's awareness of

 the positive advantages that flow from the pacifist type of citizenship. Pacifism in

 the Anglo-American democracies is recognized by non-pacifist religious leaders

 as a vocation. Non-pacifists plead for pacifists & point to a qualitative importance

 in pacifism which the community cannot afford to dispense with. Dwight Bradley

 writes: Pacifism is a religious phenomenon with definite political & historical as-   

 sociations ... It introduces into history the factor of uncalculating goodwill with all

 its spiritual creativity and ethical vitality ... It is a sign of health that democracy

 protects pacifism & is increasingly sensitive to the pacifist's appeal ... while pur-

 suing [its usual course]."   

            Pacifists & Political Programs/ Is there a Pacifist Framework?—  [In

 spite of this support] we shouldn't assume that we have a total program to offer.

 We [have been] guilty of making perilous proposals with the best intentions, of

 trying to dissuade the British government from sending reinforcements to

 Shanghai against Chinese Nationalist Forces. If the motive was the theory that

 the fewer soldiers in Shanghai, the safer the settlement would be, that assump-

 tion wasn't borne out by facts. It seems self-evident that no pacifist policy is ap-

 plicable to that situation, at that moment.  

            In the US, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) issued A      

 Call to Friends of Good Will in June 1941. It suggested that "the remedy for ag-       

 gressive war is not war, but dynamic peace; it also suggested 6 excellent prin-      

 ciples* as necessary parts of a dynamic peace program. No hint is given as to

 the sort of contribution the US should make in the establishment of order, or

 how to check lawless violence before or after "universal disarmament." Presum-

 ably, the AFSC didn't advocate using collective force. National forces should be    

 reduced with all possible speed and some form of international  police system    

 developed [at the same time]. 

                    3

              1. It's a disadvantage for anyone to use military force for its own ends;

                    reduction of armed forces is needed.  

            2. Acceptance of direct negotiations or peaceful 3rd party settlement

                    of all disputes. 

            3. All peoples shall be free to develop their own culture and form of

                     government.  

            4. Economic/ social policies that affect others must be subject to inter-

                   national consultation and authority.  

            5 Access to markets & materials, immigration & emigration should be 

                    controlled with concern for all nations.  

            6. All colonies must be administered by international authority, with  

                    the welfare & development of their government as the primary 

                    objective; all nations should have equitable access to the colo- 

                    ny's  resources & trade. 

            How are terrific disagreements in what  justice is to be dealt with

 [while national forces are being reduced & the international police system

 is in its early stage of development]? The Call fails to make clear the perso-

 nal national cost of adopting Christian pacifism, namely martyrdom of persons

 and nations. Also, the final triumph could only be far off and obscure. Integral

 Pacifists have no full political program for today and only injure our case & ex-

 asperate our non-pacifist friends if we aren't frank enough to admit that under

 present conditions coercive force not only will but must be used in the creation

 and maintenance of order. Our [non-cooperation] will be better appreciated [if-

 we are frank about that].  

            Any Integral Pacifist program for today must be qualitative, complemen-

 tary, auxiliary, made with special reference to the immediate availability of inte-

 gral pacifists acting within the existing framework of non-pacifist behavior. The       

 truth that there's no framework of Integral Pacifism except in the sense of what

 "ought to be." "What is " provides the framework, whether we like it or not. It is

 very difficult to imagine a state of affairs where most people behave as they

 ought & the minority of sinners don't overstrain the majority's spiritual resources    

            Positive Role for Pacifists in Politics—The Integral Pacifist is greatly    

 circumscribed in the part one plays by ones inability to take responsibility for

 current political policies and decisions. Any Christian pacifist (like George Lans-

 bury) who could be both a strong personal pacifist & the holder of high  govern-

 ment office [takes on] an extremely difficult position. [One such might eventually

 leave government] & concentrate on peacemaking as distinct from government,

 even regret having taken office. 

            For our example, personal peace-making involved visiting heads of most

 of the major Powers. That type of influence should be neither exaggerated nor    

 minimized. To have influence in British/ Indian relations, pacifists had to com-

 bine zeal for peace work, long & careful study of the situation, and cultivation of

 friendly relations with the chief actors in the drama.  

            At the time of the Versailles Treaty's signing, English Friends protested     

 in An Appeal to Peoples and Rulers against the failure of the Allies to include    

 President Wilson's 14 Points & ideas from other speeches. Because of their        

 relative detachment from the bitterness and anger generated by the war, and        

 because of the direct contacts they had established with Germany after the        

 Armistice, Friends were perhaps better qualified than most to point to the        

 serious consequences that would inevitably flow from the [harsh] peace terms.      

 Friends  Peace Committee in London issued a statement justifying the state-       

 ments made in the Appeal. Both statements were well-received in Germany.    

 They alleviated some of the bitterness still rankling in German Christians' minds.     

           A DIGRESSION INTO GEO-PACIFISM—I once imagined that all pacifists

 were like English pacifists I knew and not like those eager, energetic converts to

 the Peace Movement who called universal coercion peace. It was a shock to

 discover that most Continental peace-workers, mostly "pacifists," were ardent

 League of Nations supporters, & of law having force behind it.  [English "absolu-

 tists" were in no mood] for conference in the true sense of the word. When the    

 Conference came to London, we "put across left wing" resolutions which did vio-

 lence to Continental pacifist's convictions. Their emphasis upon law & order [&

 force] was conditioned by vulnerable borers, invasions, struggles for national

 freedom, & fear of attack from predatory neighbors.  

                                               

                        4

             One learned that British liberal traditions, our freedom from conscription,           

 flowed from the natural blessings of geography, & that Integral Pacifist ideas had

 taken root & flourished, not because we were better or more zealous for peace

 than Continentals, but mainly because conditions favored tolerance. England

 has ceased to be an island. 

            In British societies old & new, opinions were divided on the force issue.    

 Some saw "sanctions" as only another kind of war, & that to approve even tacitly

 in the sense of not opposing it, was to compromise pacifism. Others, by 1st-hand    

 experience of Continental conditions or imagination, had understood the "inevita-

 bility of gradualness" in the political fight against violence, & chose not to stand

 in the way of progress. The 2nd view is the minority one among British Integral    

 Pacifists; it has steadily gained converts in the past 20 years, & is likely to gain

 them faster as a result of the experience of       World War 2—how it came & the

 nature of it.  

            I journeyed to the US in 1935 and was tremendously impressed by the        

 amount of water across 3,000 miles of ocean. I found in the Peace Movement        

 over here some of the characteristics which were prevalent in England in 1919.

 Here there was a tendency, to minimize the Federal Army's potentially coercive

 role, while the role of force in the League was commonly exaggerated. There

 was also a growing internationalist movement despite the US' rejection of the

 League. [I imagined] William Penn saying, "I had 2 lessons to teach: the power

 of brotherly love ... & the need for warring princes to unite sovereignties to com-

 pel obedience to a higher law ... in God's good time ... [they] will be learned."  

            SOCIAL OBJECTIVES & PEACE/ 2 Schools of Thought—I understand

 the enormous stress that is laid in the British Peace Movement upon the neces- 

 sity of solving the poverty problem as part of abolishing war. The disastrous ef-

 fects of unemployment & poverty upon peace are: the absence of affluent con- 

 sumers in industrial states, those governments will try by every device possible

 to secure markets, usually in fierce competition with other industrial states. In-   

 tervention to secure special rights is a major cause of international friction & war.  

           Masses of long-unemployed & disgruntled men are ready material for de-   

 magogues & would-be dictator to mold to their purposes. Hitler's persuading

 masses of people to support his ambitious plans for rearmament and war-risking    

 expansion to get out of Germany's economic & social impasse was at least as    

 important a factor as dislike of the Peace Treaty in favoring Hitler's rise to power. 

            Those who are evolutionists and who believe that a fairer distribution of   

 product, & a more equitable sharing of the privileges of management & control,

 can be worked out peacefully; all concerned should help bring this about. This

 doctrine is really basic to the International Labor Organization.  Communists &

 other revolutionary socialists assume, based on impressive evidence, that those

 with privileged positions will not yield control without a fight. 

            They envisage a series of wars and revolutions that result in a planned,    

 classless economy and society, a worldwide union of socialist republics, & a dur-

 able peace. Great controversy has raged between these 2 viewpoints, but they

 agree as to the importance of social change as a prerequisite of durable peace.

 There was a time when the conception of the "United Front," which included the    

 International Peace Campaign and the Russian Trade Unionists, and excluded    

 Fascists and Tories, was strong.  

            More Pacifist Dilemmas—Integral Pacifists have not allied themselves

 with Communist parties, but an increasing number of Integral Pacifists have be-

 come avowed socialists. Many pacifists became convinced that coercion would

 have to be used to keep "aggressors" in check, while others became convinced

 that the governing class wouldn't yield power to any party which proposed radi-

 cally to alter the ownership & organization of the means of production. 

            The tendency is for some of the these pacifists to renounce pacifism,            

 while others "identify" themselves with the underprivileged working class move-

 ments, with the intention of giving every kind of aid & comfort consistent with

 their pacifist convictions. The circle of Integral Pacifists associated with Leon-

 hard Ragaz of Zurich, like the similar circles of the radical English Independent

 Labor Party, shared this 2nd attitude. Some radical pacifists abandoned paci-

 fism and got into the Spanish Civil War. 

                          5

 

             What should be the pacifist attitude if a Socialist government came

 into power constitutionally and then was challenged by a unconstitutional    

 counter-revolution? It happened in Russia after World War One. Those both     Socialist and pacifist would [advocate] the use of every force at its disposal to 

 defeat illegal violence. Integral Pacifists would probably divide, with a few going

 into the fight & the majority giving their sympathy to the effort to break the coun- 

 ter-revolution. Social strife goes on around us with unrelenting bitterness to the

 shame of our religion & our civilization, in which we are all implicated.  

            A DIGRESSION INTO PSYCHO-PACIFISM—In 1936, I read Carl Jung's    

 "Psychological Types," which revealed with a sudden illumination 1 reason why    

 pacifists find it difficult to agree with one another. Jung demonstrated 2 major    

 approaches to reality: "extroverted"; "introverted." I was struck by a curious com- 

 mon denominator in 2 papers on pacifism and public questions. One supported

 a collective international system; one supported revolutionary changes in the so-

 cial system. 

            Both groups were focusing attention upon definite and observable politi-

 cal & social data in the field of international strife in one paper & class strife in

 the other. Both concluded there is no hope of dealing with the worst kinds of vio-

 lence except by coercion, because an insufficient number of people were won

 over to a pacifist way of thought. Rather than abandon Quaker pacifism, both    

 groups argued that Integral Pacifism should be faithfully upheld.  

            Tough & Tender-Minded—While Jung agrees with William James that

 there are 2 ways of seeing reality, his classification of "extroverted" & "introver-       

 ted" gives a different content to opposed attitudes which James labels "tough" &    

 "tender." Jung writes: "Introverts shape material out of their own unconscious

 ideas & thus come to experience. Extroverts let themselves be guided by mate-

 rial which contains unconsciously projected ideas, & thus reach ideas." 

            Each type interprets the other's view of reality with a different and misun-

 derstood psychic mechanism. Jung contends that, in addition to introverted or    

 extroverted people, there are also predominately thinking, feeling, sensation &

 intuition types. Thinking is only part of reality's total view; feeling, sensation &

 intuition are equally valid operations of the psyche. Jung maintains that William

 James, with his extroverted thinking, [discounts] the introverted thought proces-

 ses which proceeds from within outward but are no less valid for that.  

            Value of Difference—There are sharply divergent types of attitudes to        

 reality. None of them has the whole truth but need [to be integrated with] the        

 compensating contributions to truth of other types. Integral Pacifists need the        

 compensatory emphasis of the attitudes & judgments of non-pacifists in the            

 wider Peace Movement. It may be taken as axiom that no single position or em-

 phasis contains the whole truth; truth is always many-sided.  

            MODUS VIVENDI AND THE WAR—A modus vivendi must be attemp-     

 ted for the sake of the cause both kinds of pacifism have at heart. I think attain-      

 tainment isn't impossible; it requires a superhuman effort of self-control &

 charity on both sides.  

            Dr. Alfred Salter (a Friend) spoke in the House of Commons of "the great

 & terrible fallacy that ends justify means & said: "I pray God ... that some states-

 man may step in and secure control of events that the leaders of the people in

 all lands have apparently lost." 

            This challenging appeal was in keeping with his whole nature & life. [We    

 can't claim a moral superiority with this attitude] & it also offers no sort of sug-

 gestion as to how the war at present can be brought to an end that is morally       tolerable for professing Christians & the wider group of pacifists. The choices

 we face are almost always between relative good or evil. 

            C. J. Cadoux recently wrote Christian Pacifism Reexamined, a survey of

 the pacifist case, particularly of the relations between Christian pacifists & non-

 pacifist Christians who are very concerned about international cooperation. In

 Cadoux's "principle of relative justification" of injurious coercion, "an action may

 be right & good as regards[: underlying motive; expected results; actual results]

 Ideally, those 3 should be identical, but in reality ... between them the distinc-

 tions carry ... certain important consequences." 

                   6    

            Those who employ injurious coercion effect some measure of positive

 good, even though their belief that it is compatible with Christian calling is mis-

 taken, & they also bring about much evil. "The free and frank acceptance of     

 [this principle helps very materially to clarify the pacifist's interpretation of his-     tory & the attitude to society around [one]."  

            Cadoux's principle crystallizes for me the conclusion I was trying to            

 reach about the deep variations in conscience & judgment about means among

 people who were equally consecrated to certain great ends. I think it is along

 this line that a basis is emerging for the necessary modus vivendi. Even during

 the war, non-pacifist Christians, internationalists, & the Archbishops of Canter-

 bury & York admit the validity of conscientious objection. Believing Christian

 Pacifists have an important contribution to make is widespread in the Church. 

            [Some believe that the call to fight must be] answered "yes" or "no." If            

 the pacifists are right it is always a moral evil to fight, & equally if the pacifists

 are wrong, it is a moral evil to refuse to fight in the cause of justice when the

 call comes. Gandhi asserted that it is better to fight than do nothing. A. J. Muste

 writes: "Resistance to evil & oppression, even if it takes a violent form, is on a

 higher moral plane than cowardly or passive acquiescence." The Integral Paci-

 fist, John Middleton Murry. writes: "The will to peace calls for a readiness to

 make great sacrifices; a reluctance to make war implies nothing of the kind, and

 may imply the very opposite."  

            John C. Bennett (Pacific School of Religion at Berkeley) & E. Raymond        

 Wilson (American Friends Service Committee) put forward the views of non-pa-

 cifist Christian and Christian Pacifist, respectively. These 2 men who take diffe-

 rent positions on the war were fundamentally closer together in spirit and their

 idea of values than Raymond Wilson was with large numbers of people vocifer-

 ous in their zeal to keep America out of war.  

            Now that American Integral Pacifists have turned much of their attention        

 to Peace Aims, it is easier to conceive of pacifists in both senses of the word        

 uniting their efforts to assure that the war shall be ended at the 1st possible mo-        

 ment consistent with conditions which include the organization of peace by in-       

 ternational cooperation. There will often be strong divergence of view. Global       

 conflict forces global solutions upon governments and peoples everywhere.        

 [Any International Authority must include the American nation]. No pacifist of        

 any kind will disagree with this proposition. Perhaps pacifists of both kinds will        

 move helpfully and hopefully toward a modus vivendi which will yield peace,            

 1st  inside the Peace Movement, and eventually in the world.  

            CONCLUSION—[Non-pacifist modus vivendi "proposal" by Dwight J.    

 Bradley]: "The task of religious pacifism is not in any sense a political task, ...

 [but rather] a cultural one. [Both religious and political tasks are spiritual]. [The

 political task] is spiritual [through] a sense of order, ... which is a  spiritual reality.

 The pacifist's task is spiritual [because ones] altruistic love is the very core and

 living germ of spirituality ... Together political & religious help  to create & main-

 tain an order which is just & gentle, righteous & humane  ... [If either or both] re-

 pudiate the other, civilization starts to break up in confusion."  

            [Integral Pacifist modus vivendi "proposal" by C. J. Cadoux]: "The pacifist

 is entitled to take ... part as a citizen ... by voting, private and public utterance, in    

 support of the measures he believes are best ... The pacifist needs to remember

 that great numbers of non-pacifist & even non-Christian fellow-citizens are des-

 perately eager to see war & risk of it abolished ... Pacifists should make it their    

 business ... to assist all who are working for peace, so far as [the others'] me-

 thod doesn't involve disloyalty to their convictions ... [Rigid] refusal to cooperate    

 [politically] needlessly discredits the cause for which one stands by withdrawing    

 support."  

            Since Quakers emphasize the unity between religion & life, we shall pre-

 fer Cadoux's statement [to Bradley's]. It is essential not to assume we are more    

 spiritual than those wrestling with day to day political responsibilities. Nor is    

 statesmanship, with its compromises, necessarily less spiritual than prophecy,    

 education, social improvements, & cultural development. Those of us whose    

 conscience precludes full participation in exercising the modern states' vast po-

 wer, must avoid a "holier than thou" attitude in judging the motives of non-

 pacifists. 

                                                        7

            

            Pacifists must face the fact that our political role is secondary, so long as

 the great majority of people are unconverted to the pacifist faith & methods. The    

 "organization of peace," in terms of creating government institutions and remo-

 ving political & economic causes of war, will proceed along non-pacifist lines.

 Once Integral Pacifists accept how harmful it is to leave aggressive violence    

 unopposed by any material or spiritual force, the basis for the modus vivendi in

 the Peace Movement has been well & truly laid. Though the pacifist isn't barred

 from forming political judgments, those judgments must be based on the reali-

 ties of the situation. Non-violent power can't be exercised by those lacking the

 faith or disciplines required.  

            The Integral Pacifist will naturally inject into politics a plea for mercy, for-   

 bearance & kindness which often mark the the best people's lives, including sol-

 diers & police, who deal directly with violence. If the person making that plea

 can't show that they have done something at personal cost to bear the burden

 of the human life and spirit's frustrations, which issue in violence, that plea will

 carry no weight. The pacifist contribution is at present qualitative rather than    

 quantitative.  

            The violence around us is a true reflection of [individual] hatred, anger,

 and fear, of greed & selfishness digging hideous gulfs between those who are

 satisfied and those who are condemned to lives of explosive frustration. The 1st

 step to peace is that major violence can and must be held in check by organized

 law and order with force if necessary. Peace isn't a goal, but a byproduct of that    

 abundant life for individuals and society which clears away frustrations and frees    

 human energies & yearnings for fulfillment. To promote that abundant life in per-

 sonal and social relationships is the supreme task of Integral Pacifism.

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                                          8

17. New Nations for Old (by Kenneth Boulding; 1942)  

            About the Author—Kenneth Boulding(1910-1993) was born in Liverpool,    

 England. Raised a Methodist, he joined the Religious Society of Friends as an  

 Oxford undergraduate. He was 1st a chemist, then an economist, beginning at

 the University of Chicago in 1932. He became a US citizen in 1937. In 1941 he

 married Elise Biorn Hansen; From the beginning, Kenneth & Elise  were central

 to peace research & active in many Friends organizations. Kenneth Boulding

 taught in many universities, published 35 books & served as president of the

 American Economics Association, & International Peace Studies Assoc. He was

 also a noted Quaker poet. He wrote poetry until his last days; Pendle Hill pub-

 lished his most recent poems in the Sonnets from Later Life: 1981-1993.  

            1. The Ripeness of Time—It may seem like lunatic optimism, at a time

 when nations are engaged in worldwide battle, to propose war's abolition. But

 great changes sometimes come unexpectedly, at a time when the old order

 seems eternal, immutable. [Dawn and seeds begin in dark, seemingly lifeless

 times]. It may be that we shall detect in our day's deadly violence not only death,

 but the birth of a new order, one without the peculiar institution of war. [Other

 evils] we shall have for many a long generation. But the evil of war we may root

 out, just as we rooted out slavery's evil. We are tempted to believe that it can't

 be destroyed until all men are perfect. There are strong reasons for believing

 that today the conditions which give it life & power no longer exist.  

            2. Conditions of Drastic Change—Evil institutions of human society

 are most likely to be reformed when the institution is economically unprofitable

 & morally intolerable. Where humankind's moral sense conflicts with its material    

 advantage, moral sense won't prevail unless it is unusually strong; moral sense    

 reinforced by material advantage is likely to be successful. Historically, material    

 advantage is often heroically sacrificed individually or nationally. Institutions lin-

 ger on in society long after they have become unprofitable. The sharp sword of

 moral condemnation must prune away dead branches. 

            It is doubtful that slavery was ever more profitable than free labor; the su-

 perior efficiency of free labor has more than compensated for the cost of wages.

 Yet slavery persisted until it aroused the moral condemnation of sensitive spirits.

 Moral & economic pressure drove it from a world it had persisted in from earli-

 est times in almost one generation. Before the children of 1800 had passed to

 the grave, the great revolution was accomplished. The forces that destroyed

 slavery are at work [even] in this world war year. Vast changes in war have in-

 creased both its unprofitability & moral foulness to where it is ripe for destruction.  

            3. Economic Unprofitability of War—War is now unprofitable to victor &    

 defeated. The wars of the powerful over the weak, by which Great Powers have

 gained overseas empires, have cost less than the victors' gains, which were

 often limited to certain classes in the victor nations. Peace advocates then have     

 an uphill task. Now, the cheap victory has gone. The system of  empire, alliance,

 & spheres of influence & interest is drawn so tightly over the globe that no easy

 prey is left for the would-be conqueror. Hitler's easy Polish victory turns out to be

 the opening campaign of a long & costly war from which Germany must emerge

 poor and disorganized, whatever the outcome. In a war between equals, victor

 and vanquished share a common impoverishment.  

            Nations dividing into 2 political factions is one reason for war's unprofita-

 bility. There is also a change in warfare technique in the direction of increasingly

 costly methods. With the growth of democracy, patriotism, and conscription, war

 has become an enterprise of the whole people, a "total war"; total war results in

 total poverty. The spectacular drama of war makes us forget the more important

 toll of war that goes on behind the battlefront.  

            Agricultural production falls off dramatically, & not just near the battlefield.    

 Farmers go off to war; Cattle and horses are requisitioned; fertilizer is diverted

 into munitions or sunk at sea; factories make war machines instead of agricul-

 tural ones. When peasants no longer send scarce food to the cities, founda-

 tions of empires crack and revolution sweeps in. In mine & factory the same

 story is repeated; workers are diverted to preparation of implements of death.

 Food, cloth, houses, roads are not grown, made, built, or repaired.  

           After the war, there are great gaps in the ranks of young men and strong

 who will never take on any of society's burdens. In almost every great war the

 drop in births is so great that the numbers of children unborn outnumber the

 men who are killed. It also takes time to restore a field's fertility. The destruction

 of productive power was great behind the line as in the devastated areas.  A        

 huge "war construction industry" is built up, which is too big for times of peace.

 It is in large part responsible for the boom and depression which universally fol-  

 low war.

             It seems that an economic system must carry excess capacity in the

 shape of idle workers and machines in time of peace, in order   to take care of

 the "peak load" of war. In addition, war brings inflation and deflation, intense    

 nationalism, import and export quotas and tariffs, and an impoverishing game

 of "beggar my neighbor."  

            4. The Moral Intolerability of War—War persists in spite of its proved    

 unprofitability. The majority of humankind still think that there are worse things

 than war, or least there are no practicable alternatives. Humankind also thought

 there was no good alternative to slavery. The  majority opinion isn't necessarily

 a safe guide to the truth. Opposition to war is now found in a broader range of

 Christian Churches, and the theory and practice of non-violence has aroused

 wide interest in the West.  

            The strength of the institution of war lies in its appeal to the moral & the

 poetic in man: desires for glory, displays of courage and suffering. These are

 potent movers of man's being. The stories of individual valor had the stuff of

 poetry in them. Now, the dashing campaigns of the professional soldier have

 given way to the drab, deadly embrace of the grey millions. [Tank, machine gun,    

 & bomber have replaced the gallantry of war]; it has become a vast machine. It

 is no longer possible, except in the case of those having vast oceans as a de-

 fense, to protect the civilian population by sending armies out to stave off the    

 enemies' attacks. In these circumstances, the courage of the soldier is of no    

 more consequence than that of the civilian. The armed forces of the smaller    

 nations might just as well not have existed.  

            5. The Dilemma of Nationalism—A nation can't survive unless it com-

 mands a deep affection & unity in the minds of its citizens. The success of a

 people in war is dependent to an enormous degree upon their morale, their wil-

 lingness to endure hardship, danger, & possibly death without losing the will to

 fight. A nation that does not lose its heart can survive anything. The Jews have

 had a love of "country," of their people and customs, based on a compelling

 sense  of purpose and religious mission greater than that of any other people 

 who have ever lived.  

            Modern war saps a nation's heart. The virus of shame over certain

 deeds done in the name of country can spread, unknown and unrealized,

 through a nation's life until the love sustaining this life turns to indifference or    

 even hatred. [Unresolved shame infected] the victorious Allies with a great

 apathy & weakness in the 20 years of armistice. Germany's shame was exor-

 cised by the harsh treatment she received. Instead of shame they developed a

 sense of injury, making them strong as a household, but dangerous, powerful,

 & destructive as neighbors.  -

            6. The Prime Cause of War—Although the case against war as an ab-

 stract institution is unanswerable, war still threatens to grow until it absorbs our

 whole attention. Given its undeniable drawbacks, unprofitability, & immortality,

 how does war still survive? This question opens us up to a flood of opinions &

 ideas on the Causes of War. Some regard war as an expression of a  "fighting

 instinct," an original sin. Marxists assert economic conflict as a cause. Others

 attribute war to subtle psychological diseases [e.g. suppressed sexual forces].

 Some blame a small coterie of evil financiers and politicians, while others point

 to the growth of armaments. All these would-be authoritative voices speak some

 truth.  

            The key proposition is that war results from the world's political organiza-

 tion into separate, sovereign, & irresponsible countries. A great deal of thinking    

 confuses war, a special, limited evil, with conflict, which is general, unlimited, &    

 ineradicable, or universal, intractable sin. Given this thinking, we often argue

 that it can't be abolished till the world has been purified from conflict and sin; [it

 seems we must drain an ocean with a pail]. It is not an ocean we have to drain,

 but a foul lake, whose foulness is a sign that the springs which fed it are dry.  

            7. Independence as a Cause of War—We have war because there are     

 independent countries, people organized for the essential purpose of maintain-

 ing their national independence by war. Within countries there are acute con-

 flicts between different social groups and geographical regions. Conflicts, espe-

 cially economic ones, are no respecters of international boundaries. Always the

 acts of government benefit some of its citizens and some foreigners, and injure

 others of its citizens & foreigners. A tariff on goods would benefit producers for a

 time, but injure consumers. Overseas,      it would benefit consumers and hurt    

 producers.  

            The disappearance of English/ Scottish wars after 1603 wasn't from less    

 wickedness, a disappearance of conflicts, or a sudden change of attitude be-

 tween Englishmen and Scotsmen. The miracle of peace was accomplished by a

 simple union of crowns, and a union of parliaments a century later. Independent         

 countries with relatively inferior positions are more openly militaristic. In richer     

 countries, it is possible for the well-meaning and ill-informed to believe that their 

 countries could continue to exist indefinitely without war. It is evident that the 

 "mythology" and ritual of national life is centered around the events & heroes of

 war. National holidays, heroes, & rituals are related to war. Even religion, where

 it subordinates itself to national emotion, becomes entangled more and more in

 military trappings. Prayers for victory replace the gospel of universal love.  

            8. The Dilemma of Men of Goodwill—From mother, teachers, prea-

 chers, & well-respected men, we have heard the praises of love of country. Flag-

 raising ceremonies have brought a sense of community with many millions of

 our fellow citizens, & a sense of "belonging" to something greater than ourselves.

 Sir Walter Scott writes: "Breathes there a man with soul so dead/ Who never to

 himself hath said,/ This is my own, my native land."  Even as we retreat from the

 world of "outsiders" whose ways are strange into the domestic kingdom of our

 family & friends, so too in national life we return from sojourn among foreigners,

 to sink back into the comfort of familiar things and affection for the homeland. 

            The man of peace & goodwill is impelled by reason to conclude that the    

 existence of the independent national state is the root of war, and yet his heart

 impels him to a true & honorable love of country. [The solution to this dilemma]

 lies in reforming the national state. The existence of a large number of diverse    

 countries can be reconciled with the preservation of world peace. A centralized

 world state could establish world peace; on what would it be based. If we pur-

 chased world peace at the price of world uniformity our descendants might well

 pine for the diversity and rhythm of our own.  

            9. The Redemption of Nationalism—[Since nations and differences

 need to be preserved], our problem is to destroy the spirit within a nation that

 gives rise to war. Wars are fought to gain or preserve an irresponsible national    

 independence [that ignores the adverse effects of national policy] on the wel-

 fare of foreigners. On the national level a politician is judged on the very loca-

 lized benefits one can provide for one's small group at the expense of one's        

 fellow citizens. The irresponsibility of legislatures destroys democracy internally.    

 This same irresponsibility of national government is destroying our system.  

           In its present form, the nation state is an intolerable nuisance, a constant

 source of war, a hindrance to establishing a rational economic system.  It is an

 ugly and dangerous anachronism which will destroy us or be destroyed by a

 super-state if it is not transformed. The following steps:  [Declaration of Depen-

 dence; restitution; "Third House" of representatives of foreign governments], are    

 possible ways in which a new spirit of responsible government might find ex-

 pression, on both the national and international plane.  

            The Declaration would be the national government recognizing its de-

 pendence on and responsibility for, people who live outside its immediate juris-

 diction. Next, restitution would be offered to rectify the effects of past acts incon-

 sistent with the Declaration's principles. A striking act of restitution, even if it was    

 primarily symbolic, would have an important effect on the minds of people and    

 governments in the desired direction. Each nation must judge [for itself what re-

 stitution it needs to offer others]. 

           In matters economically affecting Commonwealth countries, the British     

 government confers and deliberates with Dominion representatives, and comes

 to an agreed policy. There is no reason this "decent behavior" tradition should

 not be  immediately applied to all countries. Any formal organization, if neces-

 sary, could grow out of informal conferences.  [It could evolve into] a "Third

 House" of representatives of all foreign governments, to advise and even legis-

 late on matters affecting foreign interests. A nation adopting such a course    

 would become a "Moral Empire" of peoples bound by a common love & loyalty    

 rather than by force of arms.  

            10. International Political Organization—Any world organization is

 bound to break down unless there is a recognition on the part of national units

 of  responsibility for the welfare of all, as was the case for the League of Na-

 tions. The 1st task of the lovers of peace is to [seek a sense of international    

 responsibility] in national policies and in individual sentiments. There is no real

 division between a national & an international peace policy, for each is neces-

 sary to the other. A serious physical obstacle to the creation of homogeneous

 countries are the places like Eastern Europe, where a long & turbulent history

 has resulted in an unsortable mix of races, nations and tongues. Poland is de- 

 void of clear natural frontiers and of clear racial or linguistic frontiers.  

            No "composite" state, made up of many nationalities, can be secure if

 across its borders some of the nationalities are organized into independent

 countries. If nations are to live together in peace, it is important to unite all

 people of one kind in one political unit, and to exclude from this unit people of

 another kind. It is easier for nations to be friends with their neighbors if they

 do not have to occupy a common ground. 

            The League of Nations organized a vast scheme of exchange of

 Greeks for Turks which left very few Turks in Greece and very few Greeks in

 Turkey. The scheme was undoubtedly successful in improving Greco-Turkish

 relations, but at an appalling cost in human suffering. [Doing the same with

 multiple exchanges of many nationalities would cause suffering] so great that

 we must [earnestly] seek for an alternative solution. It is impossible to divide

 Europe into homogenous nations. It is possible to divide it into homogeneous    

 "Cantons," a political organization that has worked well in Switzerland. It might

 be possible to federate these small units [more easily than] larger units. Full

 autonomy could be granted in all matters of local government.  

            11. The Place of Military Coercion—The place of military coercion in

 such a system is inevitably a matter of dispute. An international "Police Force"

 [would suffer] struggles for control of it by the national groups until there was

 complete dominance by one group and the unification of the world into a cen-

 tralized world state. The use of international force would likely lead to world

 empire, rather than world unity. The international authority should be, rather

 than a military force, a center of research & information, a statistical clearing-

 house, administrator of practical problems (e.g. public health, trade, reconcilia-

 tion of national laws, etc.).  

            The fundamental error of the League of Nation's collective security sys-

 tem was to assume that the threat of war that no one intended to carry out

 would be enough, or that war could be used as a subtle, delicate weapon to

 avoid greater wars. War is only a coarse, blundering bludgeon, which can be

 used only when the people are desperate, frightened, or angry enough.   Peo-  

 ple wouldn't have gone to war in 1931, & probably never will go to war in simi-

 lar situations, because they aren't psychologically ready for war at the physi-

 cally most appropriate time.  

            The military union or alliance likely to form at the end of this war is al-

 most certain to fail, unless there should develop alongside it a spiritual growth,

 a transformation of the ideals of national policy. Lovers of peace should make

 this transformation their principal objective, and secondarily seek a "Positive

 League," separated from any system of military power, which may foster the

 slow but necessary process of nationalism's redemption.

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18. Anthology with Comments (by Elizabeth Gray Vining; 1942)  

            [About the Author]—Elizabeth Gray Vining or Elizabeth Janet Gray as

 born in Philadelphia, PA in 1902. She earned a MS in library science from

 Drexel Institute and became a librarian at UNC at Chapel Hill. She became a

 Quaker by convincement after her husband died & she was injured in a car

 accident. She was an author of many children’s books, & tutored the Japanese

 royal family from 1946-1950. After writing this pamphlet she went on to write

 PH pamphlets #34, 66, 167, 221, and #246. 

            [Even though an earthly king may inspire all manner of preparation], “at

 the coming of the King of Heaven/All’s set at 6 & 7;/ we wallow in our sin/ Christ

 cannot find a chamber in the inn. entertain him always like a stranger,/ And as

 at first, still lodge him in a manger.     CHRIST CHURCH MS

            PREPARATIONS—The King of Heaven gives no hint of his visit before-

 hand. Preparations for spiritual visitation consist of watching & praying, main-

 taining “alert passivity.” Today the number of people who are able to assert and

 to prove their assertion by their transformed lives and shining faces that they

 have been visited by the Holy Spirit is small. There are undoubtedly many who

 have had the experience but who are not willing to talk about it. 

            [If their numbers are few], there are increasing numbers of intelligent &    

  thoughtful people who are willing to enter upon preparation & spiritual training.

 Albert Einstein, Sir James Jeans and Sir Arthur Eddington find a spiritual force

 in the universe, though they may not call it God. Pascal said: “Thou wouldst not

 have sought me if thou hadst not already found me.” [Maybe] Heaven's King is

 taking a hand in such preparations. 

           A rainbow & a cuckoo’s song/ May never come together again;/ May

 never come/ This side of the tomb.     W.H. DAVIES.

            [Ecstasy]—Only a few people know ecstasy. [Here], I am thinking of “mi-

 nor ecstasies”, bits of star- dust which are for all of us. Something seen, heard,

 or felt flashes upon one with a bright freshness, and the heart stirs and lifts in

 answer. Fragments of beauty & truth lie in every path; they need only the seeing

 eye & the receptive spirit to become the stuff of minor ecstasies. [Poets are in-

 spired by great & minor ecstasies alike].

            [For me] an airplane, a great silver bird more rare then than now, coming

 out of the sunset [was a moment of ecstasy, & became my yardstick for future

 minor ecstasies. Once in sorrow, I heard the] soft & playful patter of locust blos-

 soms falling on the roof from the tree above, & my heart knew again the happi-

 ness that is of the universe. It is well to recognize & cherish the moments when

 they come; it is an added joy to collect them.

            Writing them down saves them for us; it reminds us when we need it that

 we have had these moments and will have them again. Exercising our faculty

 for minor ecstasies may actually increase the number of them we feel, though

 we must  be careful not to let lust cloud our honesty with ourselves. Minor ecsta-

 sies will light those [numerous] gray stretches like faint but unmistakable stars,

 if we but look for them.

            … And now in age I bud again;/after so many deaths I live and write;/ I

 once more smell the dew and rain/And relish versing:  O my only Light,/ It can't

 be/ That I am he/ On whom thy tempests fell all night.      GEORGE HERBERT

            [Renewal]—A mystic, he perhaps wrote of the Dark Night of the Soul,

 that arid & bleak time, experienced by most of the saints, when the Spirit seems

 to withdraw its presence, leaving the human soul in doubt and despair. Most

 great mystics have described it as the necessary stage before the soul labori-

 ously climbing the Ladder of Perfection reaches union with the divine.

 

            A Robin Redbreast in a Cage/Puts all Heaven in a Rage./ Each outcry of

 the hunted Hare/ A fiber from the Brain does tear.     WILLIAM BLAKE

            [Sympathy for Animals]—I have heard just once the outcry of the hun-

 ted hare. [My West Highland terrier chased one, caught it, & shook it to death].

 The scream of the hare before death is almost human in its intensity, & a human

 cry is nearly animal in its abandonment to pain & fright. It is part of the makeup

 of mystics that they feel a sympathy and a union with animals. [Some are gifted     

 enough to communicate the experience to others].

             After praising Brother Sun & Sister Moon, Brother Wind and Sister Water,

 Brother Fire and Mother Earth Saint Francis continues with]: Be thou praised my

 Lord, of our Sister Bodily Death/ from whom no man living may escape./ Woe to 

 those who die in mortal sin./ Blessed are they who are found in thy most holy

 will, / for the second death shall not work them ill.      SAINT FRANCIS

            PRAISE OF CREATED THINGS—St. Francis’ Hymn of Praise of Created    

 Things is [especially moving in its recognition of the beauty of the universe, it re-

 alization of our kinship with all it manifestations & its simple thankfulness. Birds

 were dear to St. Francis indeed; they enter again and again into the story of his

 life. [It is said he even preached to them; they listened reverently; awaited his

 leave to go; & left going in the 4 directions, singing praises to God as they went].

            Larks, swallows, turtle doves, and falcons are the birds St. Francis knew,

 and about which stories were told. God’s Troubadour they have called Francis

 of Assisi, because he had that skill in his youth. He would always show joy to the

 world & used his skill to sing praises in French unto the Lord Jesus Christ. In St.    

 Francis’ life, more than any other I know about, the stream ran not only humble

 and precious and pure, but joyful as well.

            To do it as for Thee … A servant with this clause/ makes drudgerie divine:

 /Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,/Makes that & th’ action fine.//This is the

 famous stone/That turneth all to gold:/For that which God doth touch and own/

 Cannot for less be told.      GEORGE HERBERT

            THE ELIXIR—All life is sacrament. In preparing meals, the engagement

 is fought daily; no ground is taken. Brother Lawrence was famous for practicing

 God's presence in the kitchen better than in the meditations in his cell. It takes a    

 special double consciousness to achieve 2-fold success in meditation & cooking.

 Work can be seen as sacrament, [with] making drudgery divine. [There must be]    

 honest dedication to a Reality honestly believed in.

            The winter tree/resembles me/ Whose sap lies in its root./ The spring

 draws nigh;/ As it so I/ Shall bud, I hope, and shoot.      THOMAS ELLWOOD.

            [Thomas Ellwood]—This is very bad poetry. [Yet,] I like its humility, its

 hope, & its unconscious humor. Where Herbert wrote joyously of actual renewal,    

 Ellwood is looking forward in a sort of numb faith to the hope of spring. Thomas    

 Ellwood was the son of Squire Ellwood of Crowell, Oxfordshire. [Following Qua-

 ker beliefs, the son refused to take his hat in his father’s presence, the father

 snatched it off, and did so until Thomas ran out of hats. After further tribulations

 & imprisonment, Thomas went to live with the Peningtons at Chalfont St. Peter

 and tutored their children. He was for a time Milton’s secretary.  A meek, drab-

 skirted Muse [would be fitting] for Ellwood, as his personality was earnest, hu-

 morless, and faintly absurd. He still speaks for many of us who dare to look for-

 ward to a time when we too Shall bud, I hope, and shoot.

            Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine,/That lights the pathway but one

 step ahead/Across a void of mystery & dread./Bid then the tender light of faith

 to shine/By which alone the mortal heart is led/Unto the thinking of the thought

 divine.      GEORGE SANTAYANA

            [Faith]—When I was in college, we had little use for faith, defined as “be-

 lieving something you know is not true.” It has taken me more than 15 years to

 know faith as the basis of action. The higher and nobler the object or force on

 which one sets one’s faith, the more daring and effective the action.

            He who kisses a joy as it flies/ Lives in eternity’s sunrise.      WILLIAM

 BLAKE

            [Releasing Joy]—One of the most effective and most necessary ways of    

 overcoming self is learning not to lay one’s hot, possessive hands on the joys

 that one values. The Cloud of Unknowing sees danger even in fastening oneself

 to mediation’s and contemplation’s joys.

 

            Mine, O thou Lord of life, send my roots rain.     GERALD MANLEY

 HOPKINS

            [Why does Evil Flourish?]—Gerald M. Hopkins poem is a paraphrase

 of Jeremiah’s previous complaint (Jer. 12:1) Though the thought of these 2

 intensely religious men are similar, [there is a difference]. Jeremiah takes com-

 fort in the prospect of the Lord’s vengeance. The modern has come into full pos-

 session of his ego, [and asks for rain on his roots].

            Patience… suffreth debonairely alle the outrages of adversitte & every

 wikked word.     CHAUCER

            [Patience]—The Parson’s Tale is a sermon on the 7 deadly sins. His

 practice of his own precepts has typified for us these 500 odd years the ideal

 country parson. He describes fully sin’s antidote among the virtues. Patience is

 a discredited value, [no doubt because as practiced today by heads of state is

 really impatience]. Patience characterized by grace and lightheartedness in

 meeting outrageous misfortune, is something different altogether.

            The sun descending in the west,/ The evening star does shine;/ The

 birds are silent in their nest,/ & I must seek for mine,/ The moon like a flower,/In    

 heaven’s high bower,/ With silent delight/ Sits and smiles on the night.//…“And

 now beside thee, bleating lamb,/I can lay down and sleep,/ Or think on Him

 who bore thy name,/Graze after thee, & weep./For, wash’d in life’s river, My

 bright mane for ever/ Shall shine like gold/As I guard o’er the fold.      WILLIAM

 BLAKE

            NIGHT—His Songs of Innocence in 1789 was as revolutionary & signi-

 ficant as the 1st snowdrop that pushes it head through the frost-hard ground, a

 wild flower in the winter forest.

            There is over all the Songs of Innocence an unearthly & ineffable shine.

 [They are to words what Blake’s “Infant Jesus at Prayer” is to painting]. A.E.

 Housman writes: “Blake gives us poetry neat or with so little meaning that no-

 thing but poetic emotion is perceived or matters.” [Perception of poetic emotion

 is] allowing the active analytic surface mind to cease questioning, and the deep-

 self, which understands symbols [intuitively], to receive the poem's full sub-

 stance, [to feel it] and be enriched by it.

            They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it... Death is but

 crossing the world, as friends do the seas. They live in one another still… This is

 the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their Friendship

 and Society are in the best sense ever present, because immortal.     WILLIAM

 PENN

            [Death]—Very few poems have been written about death when it strikes

 those whom we love, a situation that urgently calls for the balm & stimulus of

 beautiful & comforting words. That is why these lines of William Penn’s taken

 from Some Fruits of Solitude, are so valuable. Penn had lost his beloved wife &

 son, as well as his loving, protective mother. Sorrow can't be fought & overcome;

 it cannot be evaded or escaped; it must be lived with. Somehow we must learn

 to meet it with courage and to bear it with serenity, which is a whole way of living.

 We long to find in sorrow something that makes us stronger and better for the    

 experience, [perhaps something immortal]. 

            [LAST LINES]—Emily Bronte’s statement, these LAST LINES of faith in

 the God within [really] endures no comment:  

            No coward soul is mine,/ No trembler in the world’s storm troubled sphere:

 / I see Heaven’s glories shine,/ & faith shines equal, arming me from fear.//…

 Though earth & man were gone,/ & suns & universes ceased to be,/ & Thou

 wert left alone,/ Every existence would exist in Thee.// There isn't room for Death,

 /Nor atom that his might could render void:/ Thou—Thou art Being & Breath,/ &

 what Thou art may never be destroyed.

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19. Participation in Rural Life (by Mildred Binns Young; 1942)  

            About the Author—Mildred Binns Young was born in Ohio and attended

 Friends schools and Western Reserve University. She lived for some years at    

 Westtown School, where Wilmer Young was Dean of Boys. The Youngs then

 lived in the South, working under American Friends Service Committee for 19

 years; 4 pamphlets came out of the experience. From 1955- 1960 they were in    

 residence at Pendle Hill.  

            [Participation vs. Isolation]—Participation is a word which expresses

 well the Quaker view of social responsibility. To participate fully in the love of

 God, we must participate to the limit of our capacity in the passion of human-      

 kind. [Spiritual] beginners & seekers get lost from, or lost amid their  fellow-      

 men unless actual physical sharing is allowed them. It may be that the paci-     

 fist's discipline of uselessness during war is the sacrifice the world is now going

 to put upon the pacifist.  

            [There is isolation to be found in the educational process, as] we are to

 spend our youth learning to do something others can't do. Grading is based on    

 individual performance, rather than how one uses one's best in cooperation

 with one's group. The degree to which one can outstrip one's fellows is the mea-

 sure of one's promise & success. But humankind advances behind [expanding    

 frontiers] pushed out by inventors and seers, and along broad fronts where the

 ranks are knit together in a closely correlated movement of the mass.  

            Personal success [has become so important that] parental ambition can     hardly [stand] our young being merged rather than outstanding, [& it pushes the

 idea of outstanding to the point of becoming] a form of isolation. So upside

 down is our  society that young people [excelling in working with people will be    

 "promoted" out of where their talents lie into] administrative positions, where

 one is no longer responsible for anything but the delegation of responsibility.

 How is an administrator's delegation of responsibility a form of isolation?

 Even in nursing, with a very close participation in suffering, & at the pinnacle of    

 success, the nurse no longer holds basins, bathes feverish bodies, or binds up    

 wounds. [Their time is "better spent"] regulating institutions where patients are

 [cared for]. [With his doctor's degree, my friend is] "fitted to teach the teachers

 of social workers."  

            [Unrest Among Young Pacifists]—They were taught & still believe, to

 the despair of many of their teachers, that a modern war is not caused by the

 sin of one nation or the rise of perverted rulers. There is no peace until condi-

 tions of peace are laid deep in the structure of society; a single human being's

 oppression or neglect contains the seed of war. One reason war is so hard to

 get rid of is that it draws people together in great shared efforts. This closeness

 and community of interest is a universal and timeless need of human beings.

 [In the everyday], a man is given no more satisfying goal than food, a roof, and

 paid-up life insurance for his widow. Youth rebels against such a program that

 isn't worthy of the capacities given to one made in the image of God. 

            So great is the need for community of effort that it overcomes even the   

 general fear of death. Men have always been seduced to war by the offer of an    

 opportunity to die for something. We peace propagandists have cried out that

 soldiers aren't sent out to die but to kill. In "total" war [on the farm and factory

 fronts, we aren't given an opportunity to live for a common ideal but only to pro-

 duce and produce so that the fighting few may continue to kill for the common

 ideal. Rather than "Keep them killing," the battlefield slogans say "Keep them

 flying," a smoke screen of words so that our hearts do not betray us.  

            [Pacifists and "a Return to the Soil"]—The pacifist sees war as a total

 evil, & one can only take part in what one does not know how to avoid. Those

 pacifists who are drafted aren't free to choose their own line of effort. They are

 not permitted to prove their devotion or show their mettle or risk their lives. The

 pacifist may be tried by tedium, by nothingness in a time of urgency, by the or-

 deal of the side track. We pacifists have let slip a 20-year reprieve during which

 we might have built our vision into the foundations of society.  

            Instead, we have gone on educating our young for the isolation of per-

 sonal success rather than the deep community of participation in the building

 of a world which cannot break out into war, a world based on peaceable rela-

 tions at the heart of life. The maze of modern social organization offers almost

 no exit [from seeking personal success]. Among pacifist young people there is a

 wave of longing to try a "return to the soil." [There is even] a strong non-pacifist    

 movement toward the land to press from it the basic munition of food. We seek

 to exploit the Earth for the purposes of total war. We are blocked by her ex-

 haustion from our earlier attacks on her.  

            [In examining the path of "returning" to the land, some have] stipulated a   

 partnership of God, human, beast, plant, & soil. Ignore any one of these & you

 may have production, but it will be temporary & destructive. Farming can be

 called a way of life; it is more than a business, profession, or skill; it includes      

 peaceable-ness & community. I will try to set forth some of its opportunities and 

 satisfactions, & some of its requirements & disciplines.  

            [The Wholeness of the Farmer's Life]—The farmer is in cooperation 

 with Nature, [especially animals], in supplying a common requirement of men        

 & animals: food. Among people of the soil, the way is open for simple asso-       

 ciations for mutual aid not often available for city dwellers. A city dweller is       

 practically several different [barely inter-connected] people: producer; consu-        

 mer socializer; religious; family-person. Among all these compartments, the         

 integration of one's personality becomes a major psychological problem; inte-   

 gration with a group becomes a major physical problem. [The question of how

 one will find] completeness can receive no answer.  

            The farmer's life can be a solid whole. [One's labor and one's physical        

 needs, one's need of help and opportunities to help others are closely inter-       

 connected]. Meditation need not be left behind when the farmer goes to work.        

 Feet in the soil and head toward the sky, one is still in position for worship.        

 One eats reverently the fruit of one's own cooperation with the forces of pro-      

 ductiveness. One does not need [a separate time for] recreation; one is        

 recreated moment by moment in one's work. The description of village festi-      

 vals, marriages, and processions awakens an unappeased hunger within city-   

 dwellers. Having none of their own, they fall back upon those which grew out

 of a healthier, more unified culture.  

            [Farming meets Mass-Production]—When I say that the farmer's life    

 is a solid whole, & part of a vast cooperation, I am not speaking of farm life as

 we have it in most parts of the country now. With no abiding philosophy of the

 land to guide us, we went helter-skelter into a program of sheer enterprise that

 has obscured the intrinsic quality of farm life; that quality is almost everywhere

 lost. A long tale of slavery, neglect of soil, absentee ownership, insecurity of ten-

 ure, single-cropping, disregarding the [soil/ plant/ human/ animal inter-relation-

 ship]. And always, there is the perpetual draining off to the cities of [human re-

 sources] and natural wealth, which in some form or other must be returned to

 the land to avoid sterilizing the land. The national standard of converting wealth

 into cars, clothes and luxuries [is a threat to that return].  

            We have made of farm life a drudgery & disgrace, from which young  peo-          

 ple have for generations mainly studied to escape; civilization declines as farm

 life is [depleted &] debased. Young & vigorous people [need encouragement &]     

 improved farm life to make of life on the land an example of true husbandry, true

 co-operation between God & humans, & a true pattern for peace. I have listened

 to accounts of farm life from first-generation city-dwellers from the  great fertile

 areas of the Middle West. Their parents would achieve a measure of comfort in

 one place only to gather up their earnings and move on, [over & over again]. For

 some of these the farm is a nightmare memory and the worst thing they can

 think of for their children is a return to the land.  

            I have myself seen a good deal of farm life in areas where for generations  

 there have been no scope for ambition. The desire to own farms has been al-

 most quenched by the hand-to-mouth existence of tenant-farming or share-crop-

 ping. Land deteriorates, homes decay, home life grows impoverished. Some of

 the vigorous families escape to the mills & mines. The least competent drift into

 little towns & become day- or migrant-laborers. 

            In industrial towns [the once-farmers are introduced to] lipstick, store     

 clothes & installment-bought cars, but the impoverishment of life itself goes

 along with them & increases. There is also the slightly less depressing picture

 of the mechanized, commercial farm. They have little of the unique qualities

 of farm life.  They are often just hard-pressed business undertakings with em-     ployer, employees, machines, animals, & soil existing only as cogs in a ma-

 chine producing  commodities for sale; land & neighborhood are often ignored    

 & impoverished.

            [Picture of an Ideal Farm]—There are farm life experiences that don't

 fit any of the descriptions I have given. Some of us feel that with the end of the

 present war the moment may be ripe for a new philosophy of life on the land.

 We would like to be ready with some little pattern communities in which the full    

 partnership of God, human, soil plant, & animal have been set as a conscious

 goal. We picture a group of family-sized farms, held in some form of secure te-

 nure based on right use. Cooperation among them might begin with forest and    

 pastures held and used in common, [as well as resources pooled for buying &

 selling. We should leave the forms of group activity to grow out of group needs

 and according to them. Nothing satisfactory can be arranged on preconceived

 lines here. Something is wanted that doesn't advance one group at the expense

 of another.  

            Within each family-sized farmstead & from early childhood, each fami-      

 ly member shares in the work. As they grow older, they will have work suited to

 their interests & capacities. They will learn the discipline & joy of work, even the    

 distasteful and very difficult, that was well-done. Even a very small person may

 work quite alone and still know themselves as part of a harmonious whole.  A

 workshop will be part of the establishment, and articles of daily use will be made

 in it as family members have time and inclination.  

            On the housewife's side, it is necessary to [set priorities] suited to each    

 family's need and each farm's situation and growing area. Weaving & spinning

 should come last or not at all, except when members of the family find a crea-

 tive zest in weaving itself. Hand looms can't produce all the plain, durable,

 necessary clothes without eating into all other activities & becoming overwhel-

 ming. [Since looms] are big, noisy, and untidy, they should be something shared

 by the community at large. The loom is an example of needing careful examina-

 tion of the validity of our preconceptions. [Practical hand-looming comes after]:

 gardening; canning; ground flour; baked bread; quilt-making; mending making

 clothes; knitting; supply of spun material for loom.  

            [Leisure in a Life of Simplicity]—Where does leisure come into a ru-    

 ral or other style of life? Without strict simplicity standards, the answer is not

 at all. Unhappiness & overwork are not caused by the little we have but by the

 much we want. [Looked at this way], a poor southern share cropper is [a better]    

 candidate for a fresh start [than] the ambitious, ever-accumulating, more pros-

 perous farmer. If a culture is to develop in farm groups, there must be leisure.    

 [Throughout history], leisure for a culture of sorts was furnished by slaves or

 "lower class" citizens.  

            [How widely available must cultural opportunities be before a cul-       

 ture is healthy & whole?] On the ideal farm, it can be found in the reduction    

 of wants to actual needs, in collaborating rather than competing with neighbors,

 & [establishing a culture based] on values & standards relevant to their own

 way of life. If a farmer is to know the satisfaction of work well in hand & to enjoy    

 fruitful leisure, one must accept the discipline of the seasons, the weather, day-

 light and dark, rain and sunshine.  

            The first thing to say about so-called labor-saving devices is: we need to    

 become fully critical of them. Some multiply rather than save labor by increa-

 sing the conception of need. Refrigeration on a farm doesn't simplify feeding a

 family; it elaborates the food. Few of us realize how simple diet can be and still

 furnish every single need. Widely-varied food is not a need and after a while it

 is not even a pleasure. It is a labor-producing one  which creates the need for

 devices, kitchen tools, complicated utensils, [specialized implements] to beat,

 cook, chill, serve, & eat food. The question of heavy, powered farm machinery

 is more complicated. If there is force in asking whether the mule is working for

 the man or the man for the mule,  there is more force in asking when a tractor  

 has replaced the mule.  

            [Education in Farm Communities]—What shall education be in an        

 ideal farming community? There is no need for much of the "progressive"    

 education, which seeks to relate children to life. These farm children will be        

 already related to life. A rural life education must offer facilities for exit from that

 life for those who don't find it to be a "good life." Whatever basic training opens

 the way to true specialization which grows from innate gifts, that training every

 child should have no matter where one is born. Education is spiritlessly falling

 in step with an augmenting but not evolving society.

            The smallest schoolboy has already deduced that work serving primary    

 common needs is menial & unworthy of aspiration, while secondary work which    

 serves the top-heavy complexities of our society is honorable. Training of the

 head has been given a place of honor more than training of the hand & heart.  

            Husbandry of the earth's resources has been degraded, not by the men

 of the soil so much as by the educators. Modern schools which replaced one-

 room rural schools certainly facilitated the escape of young people from farms,

 but the education in these schools left farm life increasingly without a philosophy.

 4-H clubs [have worked hard] in this default of the schools, but they are handi-

 capped by emphasizing commercial success & the trappings of modernity in

 farming. No philosophy of farm life seems to emerge from their program.  

            It may be that education will have to move back into farm communities &

 be individualized for local needs. All that is taught will be taught so as to esta-

 blish in the child's mind one's true relation to one's farm home, the larger com-

 munity at hand & to the world out of sight. Education should be planned to help

 them find the way to the unique place which waits for the participation of every

 man & woman. It may be that rural communities such as we want can't grow until    

 schools suited to them have been evolved. It will be a slow process of develop-

 ment as growth occurs & further growth as development proceeds. In the long

 look ahead, perhaps school and church in any farm neighborhood or other close-

 knit community should be the pivots around which common life revolves.  

            [Tenant Farmer & Sharecropper Community]—I find my hope is in the    

 impoverished farm populations who are on poor farms because that is where

 they were born. They are unspoiled by the favoritism of a machine age and are

 suited for starting from the bare soil where the start will have to be made. They

 will not likely produce a philosophy or program of renewed rural life on their own. 

 It is my conviction that some people with a vision of husbandry as a profoundly    

 satisfactory example of the "good life" should become active farmers, so as to

 be kept out of mischief. If one isn't kept busy, one will try to create the [whole]

 crop, [rather than planting and watering the seeds of ideas one has come with,

 and waiting while they grow].  

            A healthy farm community can be built only upon healthy soil. It is made &

 kept healthy only by intimate work with it based on understanding, a reverence

 for its possibilities, needs, its role as the base of life for all generations. Realizing

 the obstacles confronting farmers requires becoming one. [People with a hus-

 bandry vision who are ready to participate] can provide a liaison between agricul-

 tural scientists and the struggling farmer. [How can farmers & the prophets of

 farm life be supported while they earn at least part of their living from the

 soil, reclaim it, and slowly sketch in new designs for farm living]?

            They will need land tenure and operating capital between seed-time and    

 harvest. Wealth has been taken from the soil, converted into money & machines,

 & the soil exhausted. No more logical use can be made of wealth than to return

 it to the soil through subsidies for right farming practices. The farmer of today is

 only to blame for further harm one does to already-damaged soil, and not even

 that if one's choices are starving one's soil or one's children.  

            [Religion of the Soil, Young People & Poverty]—The religion of the soil

 is having a revival today among educated and privileged people, who are tired

 of the dead weight of the accumulated stuff used as the measure of civilization.

 Liberal-minded older people believe in the better distribution of more & more

 stuff. Many young people look to drop this load and go back to simpler and more

 direct ways of living. Some of them haven't faced what it means to become dirt    

 farmers. They should first serve strenuous apprenticeships in heart-breaking, ex-

 isting conditions of narrowness, ignorance, erosion, prejudice, & meanness. And

 they will have to [contend with] the seduction of town-made values, which stands    

 square across the path of a developing culture of farm life. 

            Young people on a mission as farmers will have to accept poverty, [as      

 they understand it]. To their new neighbors it isn't poverty. To them poverty

 would mean hunger & nakedness, which many of them have known. For college-

 bred Americans being without plumbing, evenly-heated houses, cars or decent

 cars, vacations, washing machines, vacuums, fashionable clothes, insurance,

 savings, this is poverty. Harder than getting used to poverty's physical conditions

 is getting used to social isolation. Those around you don't even speak your lan-

 guage though they use the same words. And you aren't there to reform or to

 teach, but to participate. You must learn to let moments of dear delight in the

 meeting of minds compensate for hours of sterile separateness.  

            How have I made the most of myself; how have I done justice to my 

 own possibilities; how have I fully used the capacities given me? Only as

 you can find or develop new values which you know outweigh the old values

 can you find peace and contentment. You must often go on working under a

 sense of uselessness. The conventions as to success are so ingrained some-

 times, that you will feel you have been irresponsible toward your beloved part-

 ner or your children. 

            The life that sets out to participate fully with abandoned or neglected        

 groups in the shaping of freshly conceived patterns of success is a life for        

 which the first requirement is to shift our values, truly and deeply, to new le-        

 vels. [We shall require long "novitiates" or apprenticeships] before we commit       

 ourselves to whole-hearted participation with others and with God in building

 the very earth on which a new culture may rise. The way is open for those with    

 conviction, endurance, & patience, underlying like rock their vision. 

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20. Guide to Quaker Practice (by Howard H. Brinton; 1943)  

            About the Author—Howard & Anna Brinton arrived at Pendle Hill in the  

 summer of 1936 with a solid background of academic achievement at the colle-

 ges of Mills & Earlham, & became co-directors of a new sort of education enter-

 prise, a Quaker fusion of school & community. They retired in the 1950s & lived

 on campus as Directors Emeriti. Anna died in 1969; Howard continues to serve

 by lecturing, writing, and simply being. 

          This guide is written largely with new Friends meetings in mind. . . It will

 also be useful to new members in older meetings, & [as a reminder] to old mem-       

 bers. This guide may prove useful in supplying a summary based on Quaker           

 practices ... prior to the appearance of [the historical branches of 19^th Century    

 Quakers.] The practices presented here went through a development period

 from 1650-1750 & were formulated from 1750-1850.  

            Practice & Belief—Quaker beliefs are those which condition Christian    

 behavior in general and those which give rise to unique practices. Friends have

  . . . the conviction that no form of words can adequately convey the  living, gro-   

 wing truth of the Christian religion. [Friends neither minimize Church history, nor    

 underestimate the various interpretations of it.] The Society of Friends accepts

 into membership a person who is willing to follow the Quaker method, based on

 belief in a God-centered spiritual universe, regardless of where it might lead. 

 The Quakers religious and social doctrines are subject to new interpretation as

 more new Truth is apprehended. Neither the severe discipline of the 18^th Cen-

 tury nor the laxity of the early 20^th will meet the needs of today.  

            Structure—The basic unit in the Society of Friends is a Monthly Meeting,    

 because its official business sessions are held monthly; as few as 2 or 3 per-

 sons constitute a meeting for worship. Membership in the Society of Friends is

 through a Monthly Meeting, which may be part of a Quarterly Meeting. Several    

 Quarterly Meetings may join to make up a Yearly Meeting. Individual members

 have the same rights and responsibilities in the larger groups [as they do] in the

 smaller group. The individual may [express a concern to the Monthly Meeting,

 which will pass it upwards, or the individual may] express his concern directly to

 the Quarterly or Yearly Meeting.  

            [Because of historical branches of 19^th Century Quakers] some Monthly

 Meetings belong to 2 Yearly Meetings, or have individuals who claim member-

 ship in one or both Yearly Meetings. The fluidity in the Society of Friends' pre-

 sent organization is a sign of growth and development. The larger bodies exist,

 not as an authority over, but as an aid in undertaking matters smaller bodies

 cannot easily handle. The union of smaller bodies may take place on the basis

 of a similarity of views and practices. The Yearly Meeting issues to Monthly Mee-

 tings Queries, Advices, and reports of its proceedings. A Monthly Meeting may

 be set up or laid down only by the authority of a Quarterly Meeting. An individual

 may appeal a disciplinary action to a higher meeting. Meetings beginning under

 the care of an established Monthly Meeting are called Indulged or Allowed

 Meetings.  

            Meeting for Worship—Meetings gather monthly for business, & at least

 once a week for worship, [which is] the only Quaker practice which has existed

 from the start without [having] a process of development. Quakers accepted the    

 theology of their time, but they added . . . direct contact with the Divine Source

 [of] . . . the Sacred Book, the “Light Within,” “Christ Within,” “that of God in every

 man.” It is the Absolute Value which is the source of all relative values, however    

 imperfectly it may be comprehended by the human understanding. The Light . . .

 affords knowledge of religious truth, strength to act on it, and it inspires coopera-

 tion & unity [as Friends are “joined to the Lord, and to one another”.]  

            What is peculiar [to Quakerism] is the type of religious worship based en-

 tirely on this experience . . . centered in the Divine Life flowing into and through

 human hearts whereby we commune with God. The Society of Friends has

 never issued specific instructions regarding what the worshiper should do during

 the silence . . . that would limit the Spirit's freedom. Friends say that outward ob-

 servances [i.e. sacraments] cannot carry more of Divine grace than is found in

 the inward baptism of the Spirit and inner communion with God. [Audible] words

 should be the spontaneous outward expression of an immediate inner condition.  

                                                        1

            While the mind's surface may be ruffled with passing winds of thought or    

 fantasy, the deeper regions may at the same time be active in prayer & worship.

 Useful exercises included: self-examination to remove obstacles to a deeper    

 communion with God; repeating to oneself a Biblical or devotional passage; re-

 viewing in imagination some event; prayer with learned words, one’s own words, 

 or without words. The worshiper’s path does not lie over a well-marked road, for

 in worship one is on the frontier of one’s conscious being.  

            Prayer . . . imperceptibly passes over from a person’s outreach toward

 God to God’s answer. Such experience is seldom attained by struggling, for it

 [may not be given a name.] Friends . . . nearly all report intervening dry periods  

 when God seems far away & meeting for worship is formal & unfruitful. To the    

 intellectual silent worship offers one essential ingredient of life that can't be ob-

 tained through books, lectures, or sermons: one [again becomes aware] of one’s

 roots in the deep, spiritual soil of one’s existence. The experience which lifts us

 out of the world carries us back to it; we can't know the God’s joy & peace with-

 out seeking to bring joy and peace to others [by] changing something on earth

 that it may more resemble the Kingdom of God.  

            The success of meetings for worship depends somewhat on preparation

 . . . a general preparation of life & character. An important type of preparation

 for group worship is individual devotion. The time immediately preceding First

 Day morning meeting is important in preparing for worship, [and should involve

 quiet reflection].  

            No one should go to a Friends meeting with the expectation either of        

 speaking or of not speaking. As the worshiper sits in silence a message may

 arise which is recognized as one intended not simply for oneself but for the    

 whole gathering. A peculiar sense of urgency is usually the sign of divine re-   

 quirement. The [vocal ministry] should contain some, if not all, of the following:

 a religious focus (i.e. see the matter as God would see it); spontaneity; being

 an instrument through which the Spirit speaks; stating a message vs. arguing a

 case; simplicity; brevity; cease speaking when the message has been delivered;

 vocal prayer. Friends are cautioned to be patient with themselves and with one    

 another, to endeavor to perfect the instrument, or allow it to become perfected.  

            The best worship is achieved when the worshiper is unconscious of the

 passage of time, and is no way reminded of it. The suitable length of a meeting

 was judged not by a [time limit] but by the judgment of 2 responsible Friends. In

 recent years 1st Day morning meeting for worship has tended to last about one

 hour. [Daily meetings may be a half-hour long. The room should be of satisfying

 size and proportion. It should be plain, including only necessary equipment.

 Friends should not be scattered about, but should gather in an orderly manner    

 comparatively near to one another. The traditional seating arrangement is 2 or 3

 rows of raised benches along the longer side of the room facing the other ben-

 ches, occupied by the older & more experienced friends. Newer meetings have

 the seats drawn up in a hollow square or circle.  

            One early type of meeting was the retired meeting, where a small num-

 ber gathered before regular worship, & little or no speaking was expected.     

 The threshing meeting was held with the express purpose of convincing people

 of the Society of Friends' doctrines. The “opportunity” was applied to a meeting

 for worship which began suddenly and unexpectedly in a group assembled for

 social or other purposes. Another religious exercise of great historical impor-

 tance was the daily reading of the Bible in the family.  

            Very early in the Quaker movement certain Friends were recognized as   

 qualified to have more responsibility for the good order of the meeting (i.e. El-

 ders). Elders or their equivalent, are still appointed by most meetings. . .  [from

 a group of] tactful, discerning persons who naturally draw to them those in

 need of help. The duties of elders are mainly concerned with promoting condi-

 tions favorable to the success of the meeting for worship. [They encourage

 those reluctant to share ministry], & deal firmly with persons who abuse the

 freedom of the meeting with too much discourse. Recorded ministers & elders  

 still meet to consider the meeting’s spiritual life. 

                                                        2

 

            Meeting for Business—Every meeting should hold a business session

 at least once a month, preceded by a time of worship. [Corporate] Guidance [is   

 central to Quakerism &] is sought from the Spirit of Truth & Light. In the trans-

 action of business the meeting assumes that it will be able to act as a unit; no

 vote is ever taken. The clerk of the meeting apprehends and records the deci-

 sion of the meeting. The business before the meeting is generally presented by 

 the clerk, but it may come through a committee report or from an individual

 speaking under a sense of concern. When the discussion [reflects] a fair de-

 gree of unity, the [presiding] clerk or [recording clerk] prepares a minute which

 states the judgment [or sense] of the meeting as the clerk  understands it; the

 minute is read to and approved by the meeting.  

            [Anyone] still unconvinced may remain silent or withdraw their objections       

 If they are not able to withdraw their objection, the clerk generally feels unable

 to make a minute, especially if the objection’s source is known for wisdom and    

 experience. If a strong difference of opinion exists on an urgent decision, the

 subject may be referred to a committee with power to act. . . it must be remem-

 bered that minorities are sometimes right.

            A time of silence [may be called for in times of tense disagreement].     

 Theoretically, the clerk is not a presiding but a recording officer. A clerk’s most

 difficult problem is to determine the right speed with which business can be    

 satisfactorily transacted. [Other concerns of the clerk include]: discussing one

 topic at a time; unfinished business; keeping discussion addressed to meeting

 as a whole; clarifying remarks or encouraging  someone to finish theirs.  

            Minutes are preserved &, for more important meetings, they are printed.

 Such minutes of previous meetings as will aid the meeting in deciding what

 business should come before it should be read. The meeting may employ a

 secretary to attend to keeping a current member list, notifying committee of

 meeting time & places & supporting their work, arranging lectures & hospitality.  

            This method of conducting a meeting requires more patience & takes            

 more time. The Quaker method differs fundamentally from several other con-     

 sensus methods; debate is out of place here. The object of speaking is to ex-

 plore as well as convince. The Friends method of attaining results exhibits        

 principles typical of organic growth . . . often obtained by a kind of cross-       

 fertilization. The early speakers on a subject affect those who follow; the pro-       

 cess concludes with an expression by some individual as can be endorsed by    

 the whole meeting.  

            Even if it requires years, this way may still be more expeditious than            

 other methods in producing the right result. It often happen that neither the        

 majority nor the minority is right, in which case the Quaker way may provide        

 time for the truth to become apparent. Unity is always possible because the      

 same Light of Truth shines in some measure in every human heart tending to-  

 ward the same goal. By prayer, meditation, and worship that goal gradually        

 becomes apparent.  

            Subjects of the Business Meeting [Appendix of original content]—       

 Committee members for special & less crucial purposes are nominated from

 the floor. Key positions & standing committee members are nominated by a        

 special nominating committee. A Yearly Committee usually finds it convenient

 to empower an executive committee to act for it on matters which can't be post-

 poned in the intervals when it is not in session. Committee business is conduc-

 ted by the same methods as in the business meeting.  

            In most meetings shepherding the flock is assigned to the Overseers or

 the Committee of Overseers. They are expected to visit all the families at least

 once a year, & more often in times of crisis. If any member is guilty of acts seri- 

 ously contrary to Society of Friends principles, the overseers should deal with

 them in a spirit of love in order for their help and the meeting’s reputation.  

            All money needed for the work of the Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly        

 Meetings is raised by the Monthly Meeting and entrusted to its Treasurer.  Ap-      

 plication for membership is made to the Monthly Meeting by letter addressed to

 the overseers or to the clerk. A [membership clearness] committee ascertains

 whether or not they understand the beliefs of the Society of Friends, & agrees

 to them, and intends to abide by them. The Monthly Meeting grants the applica-

 tion with a minute made to that effect. Children are welcomed into the religious    

 community for the same reason that they are welcomed into a family; they

 come from the very beginning under the care and oversight of the meeting.  

                                                        3

            If the meeting approves members to “travel in the service of Truth,” they

 are given a minute, which should be presented to the meetings to which they

 go, and turned in along with a report at the conclusion of their service.   The      

 Meeting should be sensitive to the needs of its neighborhood and to the         

 larger population around it. Social evils of many sorts call for alert attention.        

 The interest which the meeting’s members take in the Monthly Meeting's           

 business will largely depend upon the variety and validity of the activities en-

 gaged in and reported upon. New meetings should be regularly cared for by the

 parent meeting.  

            Records of membership, removals to & other meetings, births, deaths,  

 and marriages should be accurately kept. Certificates of Removal may be gran-

 ted to members wishing to remove their membership to another meeting. Sojour-

 ning minutes are granted to meeting members attending another meeting.  

            Marriage of members or of others wishing to be married after the man-

 ner of Friends are under the care of the Meeting. A [marriage clearness]  com-  

 mittee is appointed to make sure that no obstructions appear. After approval,

 a marriage oversight committee is appointed. The union of man & woman in    

 marriage being an act of God rather than of humans, it can't be consummated

 by anyone other than the contract parties.  

            After the meeting is well settled, the bride & groom enter, arm in arm.            

 After a short silence, the bride and groom rise and repeat the ceremony. The     

 ushers bring forward the marriage certificate which is signed by the contrac-       

 ting parties. This certificate which contains the words of the promises which the

 bride & groom have made to each other is then read aloud; later the certificate

 is signed by the guests. The vows are followed by a meeting for worship. Fune-

 rals or memorial meetings are conducted according to the principles which go-

 vern a meeting for worship. In all matters pertaining to burial, simplicity is urged.  

            The Ministry of Teaching—The religion of the Society of Friends is

 based on an inward experience deeper than intellectual concepts, it can't be        

 taught in same way that subjects are taught in a school curriculum. First Day        

 (Sunday) Schools didn't exist among Friends until recently. Today Friends have

 for the most part adopted the usual Protestant form of Bible Teaching. Many       

 important facts about religion can be communicated by the usual teaching me-      

 methods. To be aware that one is part of a great stream of religious  thought &      

 experience flowing out of the remote past into the future is a necessary part of     

 attaining insight into the problems of the present. The Bible furnishes the lan-

 guage and figures of speech in which religious experience is expressed in the

 West.  

            The Adult Discussion Group may be a part of the First Day School pro- 

 gram or it may meet on a week day at some member’s home, in order to edu-

 cate opinion. A good leader will draw out the opinions of others rather than       

 expressing their own, ask pertinent questions at appropriate times, and not be     

 afraid of prolonged silence for reflection before, during, and after the discussion.    

 Lectures should occasionally be arranged by the Monthly Meeting to enlighten    

 members and others; religious political, educational, & industrial leaders should

 be heard.   

            Schools were set up by many Monthly Meetings as the Quaker move-           

 ment spread in the 17^th & 18^th centuries throughout the American colonies. With

 the coming of public schools, the number of Friends’ elementary schools rapidly    

 declined. The object [of the schools] was not to equip the pupils for success ac-

 cording to worldly standards, but to live according to the Quaker pattern. A few

 of the boarding schools and academies became colleges. The conference’s pro-

 gram consists of meetings for worship, lectures, and discussions.  

            Adult Education is of peculiar significance in the Society of Friends be-        

 cause of the important duties which are shared by all its members rather than            

 being laid on specialists trained in theological schools. Woodbrooke in England

 was founded in 1903 for this purpose. Schools at Haverford and Swarthmore

 colleges in Philadelphia filled this role from 1917-27. These same efforts now fo-

 cus at Pendle Hill, Wallingford PA, which was opened in 1930 as a center for re-

 ligious & social study and for training persons for foreign work under the Ameri-

 can Friends Service Committee. Friends have always had a testimony against    

 verbalism (i.e. emphasis on language skills, rather than the substance the words

 point to).

                                                        4

  

            The result of both the meeting for worship & the meeting for business        

 depends to a large degree on the [social] inter-play of understanding, friend-       

 ship, & love among members. When a meeting succeeds in making persons of    

 various races, [degrees of] education, and economic status feel genuinely at

 home it has come a long way toward [the gospel goal of having] “neither Jew

 nor Greek, bound or free.”

            Social Testimonies—People should begin the reformation of society in

 that area where their most immediate responsibility lies, that is in themselves,

 & work from there outward as the way opens. The Friend with an uneasy con-       

 science . . . can secure a measure of inward satisfaction by doing what he

 feels called upon to do regardless of results in terms of success or failure.

            The Quaker appeal has generally been based on the spiritual harm

 wrongdoers were doing to themselves and the resulting loss of inward peace.     Society's ideal pattern should be incarnated in the meeting as a social unit in

 which the various parts are organically related so that it becomes in some de-

 gree the “mystical body of Christ,” . . . the feet and hands through which

 Christ’s work is carried on in the world. . . The Society of Friends is still very far

 from discovering all the consequences of its religious premises.  

            The Quaker social doctrines [is here outlined] under 4 heads: communi-     

 ty, harmony, equality, and simplicity. Community within the meeting becomes

 manifest as an attempt of the members to share with one another spiritually, in-   

 tellectually, socially, & economically. A religious family, being larger, could have

 greater stability in sharing with each other economically. Friends encourage the

 kind of social service [outside the meeting] in which the work is done with ra-

 ther than for those who are helped  e.g. American Friends Service Committee,    

 especially in the aftermath of war].  

            [When] in Harmony, those holding the peace testimony seek to reconcile    

 individuals to one another so that ... cooperation replaces conflict. These me-

 thods can be applied to the settlement of disputes in the world at large [without

 war, which] is a test of strength, not a search for truth and justice. Quaker paci-

 fism is based primarily on religious insight which often gives clear indication that

 certain actions are wrong irrespective of the results which may be humanly fore-

 foreseen. One must live up to one’s own conscience which reveals to one the

 highest moral values that one knows, whether this conscience leads one to fight

 or to refrain from fighting. Friends have been pioneers in methods now univer-

 sally used in dealing with [criminals], prisoners, the mentally ill, and children.  

            Equality means that all have equal worth in God's sight; equality was

 the earliest social testimony. Equality in the ministry between men and women

 was recognized in the Society of Friends from the beginning. [Outward] distinc-      

 tions . . . should never be used either to flatter or humiliate. Doing away with ac-

 cepted usages based on social inequalities caused extensive suffering through

 fine and imprisonment.  

            The coming of religious liberty to England was a triumph of non-violent

 method after the then usual method of violence had failed. . . Quaker tradition

 also exercised a powerful influence on the U.S.'s Constitution. Work in line with

 the testimony of racial equality developed more slowly & has failed to keep pace

 with the need. The doctrine of equality as far as it refers to economic status is

 as yet, largely undeveloped. Friends today are groping for light on these difficult    

 questions which are rendered even more highly complex by contemporary

 conditions.  

            Simplicity means in general: sincerity; genuineness; avoidance of super-

 fluity. In dress, simplicity first led dispensing with useless ornaments at a time

 when fashionable dress was excessively elaborate. Though [traditional] “plain

 dress” has largely disappeared, much ornamentation is still considered out of

 place. In speech, simplicity means that the truth should be stated as simply as

 possible without affectation, excess words or rhetorical flourish; in business it

 meant a one price system in selling goods.  

            Making an affirmation rather than taking an oath falls under simplicity of     

 speech. “Plain language” included: the use of “thou” for second person singular;    

 omitting titles such as “Mr.,” Mrs.,” and “Your honor”; numbering the days of the

 week & months of the year instead of using pagan names. [Most of “plain lan-

 guage” is no longer used]. In behavior, simplicity means avoiding pretense or    

 affectation, [and not] “engaging in business beyond their ability to manage.”  

                                                        5

            Society of Friends' members are far from living up to what they profess.

 They realize that they are partly responsible for the social evils by which they

 have materially benefited. They also believe [that] God's power enables them

 to “get atop of” these things. They seek [as best as they are able], to “Be not

 conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  

           The Queries—In early times the Yearly Meeting sent down to its Quarter-     

 ly & Monthly Meetings a series of questions in order that it might keep informed

 as to the condition of its meetings and their members. In the course of time the

 Queries . . . became a means of self-examination & evaluation as well as [their

 original purpose]. Most meetings today have kept the queries as a kind of Qua-

 ker confessional. Queries in various forms can be found  in Yearly Meeting dis-

 ciplines. The following revised Queries are [the most remarkable] ones formu-

 lated by the two Philadelphia Yearly Meetings in 1946.  

           How Is there a living silence in which you feel drawn together by    

 God's power in your midst?      How is vocal ministry in your meetings           

 exercised under the direct leading of the Holy Spirit, without prearrange-

 ment, & in the simplicity sincerity of Truth?      How are your meetings for    

 business held in a spirit of love, understanding and forbearance?      How

 do you seek the right course of action in humble submission to Truth's

 authority & a patient search for unity?      How do your children receive

 the loving care of the Meeting and are they brought under such influen-

 ces as tend to develop their religious life?      How do you counsel with

 those whose conduct or manner of living gives ground for concern?  

            What are you doing to ensure equal opportunities in social and        

 economic life for those who suffer discrimination because of race, creed    

 or social class?          What are you doing to understand and remove the

 causes of war and develop the conditions & institutions of peace?     

 What are you doing to interpret to others the message of Friends and co-

 operate with other in the Christian message?     How do you make a place

 in your daily life for inward retirement and communion with the Divine

 Spirit?      How are you careful to keep your business and your outward

 activities from absorbing time & energy that should be given to spiritual

 growth and [your right share of] the service of your religious society?     

 How do you faithfully maintain our testimony against military training and

 other preparation for war . . . as inconsistent with the spirit and teaching

 of Christ?  

                                                        6

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